Various research teams around the world have developed tumor killing particles that consist of drug ferrying vessels and antibodies. The vessels protect the drug cargo within, while the antibodies serve as homing mechanisms to deliver the medication precisely where it’s needed. While many of these approaches have demonstrated some effectiveness, the problem is that the chemical bindings between cargo vessels and antibodies lower the antibodies’ abilities to find their targets and the bindings themselves lead to proteins building up on the nanocarriers, reducing their effectiveness.
To overcome these problems, researchers at Mainz University Medical Center and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have come up with a physical, or non-chemical, method of connecting antibodies to drug ferrying nanoparticles. “Up to now, we have always had to use elaborate chemical methods to bind these antibodies to nanocapsules,” explained Professor Volker Mailänder of University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “We have now been able to show that all that you need to do is to combine antibodies and nanocapsules together in an acidified solution.”
The new technique, which involves putting the two components within an acid solution, works through adsorption, or physical adhesion. It is much safer on the antibodies, allowing them to function nearly as they would on their own, while keeping the nanoferrying particles stable and effective at delivering the drugs within.
Here’s an animation demonstrating the workings of the new approach:
Study in Nature Nanotechnology: Pre-adsorption of antibodies enables targeting of nanocarriers despite a biomolecular corona…