Miniature heat seeking ‘grenades’ full of cancer drugs which target tumours without damaging healthy tissue, have been created by scientists. Researchers at Manchester University have repurposed bubble like structures in the body called liposomes which they can pack with chemotherapy medication and send right into the heart of cancerous cells. The liposomes are usually used in the body to deliver molecules into cells, but scientists realised they could use them to take drugs directly to tumours. Now they have fitted them with a heat-activated trigger so that when they encounter a warm tumour they ‘burst’ releasing medication into the cancer cells.
Kostas Kostarelos, study author and professor of nanomedicine at the University of Manchester, said: “Temperature-sensitive liposomes have the potential to travel safely around the body while carrying your cancer drug of choice. Tumours are then heated to 42 degrees, which is a few degrees hotter than core body temperature and the drugs will not work until they encounter that level of heat.
Although the drug delivery system has so far only be trialled in mice, researchers are confident it will also work in humans. The research was presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool. –Online agency
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