Chemotherapy works differently in children than adults, sometimes in surprising ways. Researchers at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed special nanoscale packaging for Dasatinib (aka SPRYCEL), a chemo agent. Working with colleagues at the Hospital Sant Joan de Deu-Barcelona, they showed that using their packaging to deliver the chemo agent into mouse models with pediatric sarcomas, that were taken from real patients, resulted in tumors slowing their growth and the animals living by about 40% longer.
The research is still in a preclinical stage, but the findings do foreshadow potential for a powerful and targeted way of delivering drugs to tumors.
From the study abstract in Journal of Controlled Release:
We report for the first time on a nano-drug delivery system based on glucosylated polymeric nanomicelles to actively target the second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor dasatinib to glucose-avid pediatric sarcomas by the intravenous route. After a comprehensive physicochemical characterization that confirmed the substantially lower critical micellar concentration and the higher encapsulation capacity of the glucosylated amphiphilic nanocarrier with respect to the pristine counterpart, we showed a 9-fold decrease of the half maximal inhibitory concentration of dasatinib in a rhabdomyosarcoma cell line, Rh30, in vitro
Study in Journal of Controlled Release: Glucosylated nanomicelles target glucose-avid pediatric patient-derived sarcomas…
