Nanomedical Cancer Innovations

Nanoparticle treatments could prove a powerful new force against cancer

Nanomedicine is going to be big; really big. This rapidly emerging field of research is likely to have a massive impact on 21^st century healthcare. Some scientists even compare it to the Industrial Revolution in terms of the impact it’s expected to have. Billions of dollars are pumped into this field every year, and that investment is beginning to pay off as the first nanomedicines start to hit the shelves. Meanwhile, scientists are busy at work trying to uncover more about nanoparticles and how they could be used to address some of the greatest challenges of modern medicine; and one of the most formidable of these challenges is cancer.

About the same size as most natural biological molecules, nanoparticles have a number of qualities that make them excellent medical devices. They’re very small, which means that they can pass easily through the body to the site of interest. What’s more, their size, shape, and composition can all be adapted to suit different environments and purposes; this means that nanomedicine is extremely useful, particularly when it comes to cancer, where non-invasive, adaptable therapies are particularly important.

There are many ways that nanoparticles could prove a useful weapon in the fight against cancer. The particles could be used to carry drugs directly through to cancerous areas of the body, allowing stronger concentrations and smaller amounts of drugs to be administered. Nanoparticles might also be used as a contrast material to help identify tumours quicker, or as a form of thermal therapy, conducting heat so as to destroy unhealthy tissue.

Rohanah Hussain on B23

Work currently being carried out at Diamond focusses on one area of nanoparticle cancer therapy that looks especially promising: using the particles to enhance the effectiveness of existing radiation treatments. Radiotherapy is a commonly used technique for combatting cancer, but there are some significant pitfalls.

Radiotherapy works by exposing the patient to radiation in the form of photons. The photons damage cancerous cells and can kill a tumour, but they also have a very narrow therapeutic window; this means that the amount of radiation needed to destroy the cancer can be very close to, if not more than, the amount that also kills lots of healthy cells. That’s why patients often start feeling really unwell, and if a patient needs more radiation that can safely be administered without killing too many healthy cells, then radiotherapy ceases to be an option.

But nanoparticles could help to change this situation. They react intensely to photons, damaging surrounding cells; this means that they could enhance and better target radiation treatments so that much less exposure has a greater effect. This approach has an added advantage because the facilities are already in place. Doctors would simply need to introduce nanoparticles to the site of the tumour prior to beginning radiation treatment. This small addition to the current process could dramatically improve the effectiveness of radiotherapy.

More work is needed to bring this research into a clinical setting, and the first step towards developing effective nanoparticle cancer therapies is to work out how exactly they kill tumours. Using Diamond’s I15 and B16 beamlines, Dr Fred Currell and his team from Queen’s University Belfast have determined that the process begins when photons from the radiation treatment knock electrons off of the atoms inside the nanoparticles; a chain reaction then causes many other electrons to leave the atom, resulting in a release of energy that destroys surrounding cells. This makes the radiation treatment much more localised and much more effective.

Radiation treatments also cause a chemical reaction that transforms water in the body into a more toxic element called hydroxyl (OH). It is well known that OH is responsible for about 70% of DNA damage, and hence cancer cell death, in conventional radiotherapy. The addition of nanoparticles could potentially increase the amount of OH produced in a localised area, increasing the effectiveness of the radiation.

Diamond enables the scientists to visualise both of these processes taking place. What’s more, the synchrotron allows the team to adjust the energy of the photons being emitted; this means that they can expose nanoparticles to photons carrying different energies and observe how the behaviour of the particles changes. The team’s goal is to identify mechanisms at work which will in turn indicate the perfect size and composition of nanoparticles.

But this is no simple feat. There are many different kinds of cancer and the type of nanoparticle and radiation dose that tumours respond to is different depending on the variety of cancer you’re working with. Fred and his team are currently focussing on breast, brain, and prostate cancer, but they hope to eventually create therapies for a wide variety of different cancers.

Fred observes why I15 and B16 are so useful in this work: “Diamond gives us something we can get only at a synchrotron. By using the machine to precisely manipulate the energy that hits the nanoparticles, I can turn on and off certain processes, test hypotheses and, ultimately, point the way to developing more effective therapies.” He continues: “Modern medical research often starts with fundamental atomic processes and that’s what we’re doing here.”

Nanoparticle cancer treatments are already in clinical trials, but the work of Fred and his team could help to further improve the effectiveness of these next-generation therapies. Fred is well aware of what his research could mean for patients. He explains: “My daughter became ill some years ago. I was sitting in the hospital feeling very useless, but seeing amazing feats of science and technology saving her life. This got me thinking – ‘you can contribute to this’.”

And so Fred moved from studying fundamental physics to researching novel cancer treatments. “The science I was doing before was important and fascinating, but I suppose I just began to feel a sense of urgency with these issues. The skill set I’d developed from fundamental physics gave me a really useful perspective, and I think it’s helped me to push forward some important discoveries about the way nanoparticles behave at the atomic level, and how we can harness that behaviour as a cancer therapy.”

Fred concludes: “If we get this right, it will help people for years to come, well beyond my lifetime. I think it’s the idea that this research will go on to benefit our children’s lives and their children too; that’s the best thing for me. That makes everything completely worthwhile.”

Fred and his team are part of one of the most important medical movements in history. Their work could redefine the way we approach cancer therapy and significantly improve the way those therapies impact on the lives of patients. There’s still work to be done, but it looks as though nanoparticles have the potential to augment current cancer therapies and improve outcomes for patients; and for people like Fred who dedicate their lives to cancer research, that is most certainly a cause worth striving for.

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Nanomedical Cancer Innovations

Nanoparticle treatments could prove a powerful new force against cancer

Rohanah Hussain on B23

Rohanah Hussain on B23