Using a newly developed method to coat cancer drugs with membranes from a patient’s own platelets allows cancer drugs to remain in the body and combat tumor cells for longer periods of time compared to untreated cells, scientists from North Carolina State University report.
Quanyin Hu and Zhen Gu, from the joint biomedical engineering program at NC State and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and their colleagues tested the new platelet membrane method in mice. They found that it allowed the medications to remain in the creature’s bodies far longer than traditional drug delivery methods, according to UPI reports.
“There are two key advantages to using platelet membranes to coat anticancer drugs,” Gu, the corresponding author of an Advanced Materials paper describing the findings, said in a press release. “First, the surface of cancer cells has an affinity for platelets – they stick to each other. Second, because the platelets come from the patient’s own body, the drug carriers aren’t identified as foreign objects, so [they] last longer in the bloodstream.”
“This combination of features, means that the drugs can not only attack the main tumor site, but are more likely to find and attach themselves to tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream – essentially attacking new tumors before they start,” added Hu, a Ph. D. student and the study’s lead author.
Membrane allows drugs to circulate five times longer
Hu and Gu began by taking blood from the mice, isolating platelets and then separating their membranes. They then placed those membranes in a solution with a nanoscale gel that included doxorubicin (Dox), a drug that attacks the nucleus of a cancer cell. Next, they compressed the solution to force the gel and drug through the membrane to create nanospheres.
The nanospheres were then treated so that their surfaces were coated with another anticancer drug, TRAIL, which attacks the cell membranes of cancer cells. When the pseudo-platelets, which can circulate in the body five times longer than uncoated versions (30 hours vs. 6 hours), they bind to the surface of the cancer cells and deliver a one-two punch the membranes and nucleus.
The authors reported that in the mice study, using Dox and TRAIL in the pseudo-platelet drug delivery system was significantly more effective against large tumors and circulating tumor cells than delivering the two drugs without the membrane. Gu said they want to do more pre-clinical testing on the technique, and that it could also be used to deliver other types of drugs.
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Feature Image: NC State University
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