The cells of triple negative breast cancer tumors don’t have receptors for estrogen, progesterone, and HER2, the main targets used to attack breast cancers. This is why they’re so difficult to treat, but researchers at George Washington University have shown that a technique of delivering a chemotherapy agent within specially designed nanoparticles can be very powerful against these triple negative breast cancers.
The team, after much trial and error, concocted a formulation of the nanoparticles so as to have the greatest effects on the human cancer lines they worked with. Turns out the smallest nanoparticles that are designed to have the slowest release of the doxorubicin, the drug that was studied, had the most powerful killing effect.
Of course the nanoparticles will next have to be tried in lab animals before going further into clinical trials, which will surely take quite a few years.
Study in journal Precision Medicine: Nanoparticle-Encapsulated Doxorubicin Demonstrates Superior Tumor Cell Kill in Triple Negative Breast Cancer Subtypes Intrinsically Resistant to Doxorubicin…
Via: George Washington University…
Image courtesy of Adam J. Friedman