Drugs Packaged In Fats Could Deliver Faster And Shut Down Cancer-Causing Genes

Drugs packaged in fats could deliver faster and shut down cancer-causing genes, say Australian researchers. Such drugs would spare normal healthy tissues.

Ms Sherry Wu, with the University of Queensland, hopes the new technique will hasten the application of RNA interference or gene-silencing, a technology that can inactivate individual genes.

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Until now, treatment of cancers, like the cervical, has relied mainly on surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Though these strategies have benefited millions of cancer patients to date, the lack of tumour specificity of some of these agents often make patients feel sick or result in significant hair loss.

RNA interference, a Nobel-prize winning technology discovered in late 90s, does provide for targeted delivery of drugs.

But the gene-silencing drugs are hard to deliver due to their instability as well as the lack of means for their efficient cell entry.

“The traditional ways of packaging these drugs into suitable carriers are often complex and labour-intensive. The resulting products are also unstable at room temperature which is obviously not ideal for their clinical use,” says Ms Wu, a doctoral student at the UQ Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine and one of the 2009 Fresh Scientists.

In order to deliver the gene-silencing drugs safely and efficiently into tumour tissues in the body, they have to be packaged in lipid-rich carriers.

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The packaging method developed jointed by Ms Wu and Dr Lisa Putral shows promise in bringing the technology to clinics. The two researchers have been assisted by Dr Nigel Davies, an expert in drug delivery.

Using this technology, she and her colleagues observed a 70 per cent reduction in tumour size in a cervical cancer mouse model.

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“We are excited about our findings and we are currently investigating the feasibility of combining this gene-silencing technology with low dose chemotherapeutic agents in cancer treatments,” says Associate Professor Nigel McMillan, of the Diamantina Institute, who supervised the work.

With cancer currently affecting more than 20 million people worldwide, the researchers believe that this latest development has made RNAi therapy for cancer treatment one step closer to reality.

“We are also currently looking into its potential use in other forms of cancer,” Dr McMillan said.

Sherry Wu is one of 15 early-career scientists presenting their research to the public for the first time thanks to Fresh Science, a national program sponsored by the Federal Government.

Source-Medindia
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