Promising results from a new method of delivering cancer drugs reducing chemotherapy's side effects and boosting the strength of the tumor-fighting medicine.

The treatment had an effect even when given at doses as low as 20 percent of the typical amount, said the research presented at a science conference in Chicago and published simultaneously in Science Translational Medicine.
In addition, it was shown to concentrate drug activity in the tumor up to 10 times higher than seen in conventional application of the same chemo drug.
"If you try to get that concentration in a conventional form, you will kill the patient," said Omid Farokhzad, a physician-scientist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-senior author of the clinical trial.
The 17 patients involved in the ongoing phase 1 study all have advanced cancers, according to the results presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting.
Six of the patients have shown some response to the drug, with one cervical cancer patient showing a shrinkage of tumors and five showing stabilization of their diseases, which include pancreatic, colorectal, bile duct, tonsillar and anal cancer.
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The nanomedicine is called BIND-014, and Farokhzad, who is also an associate professor at Harvard School of Medicine, described it as the "the first of this kind ever to be going into humans for any kind of illnesses."
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BIND-014 is made by BIND Biosciences, a biopharmaceutical company in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.
Study co-author Philip Kantoff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the emerging data "validates the potential for the revolutionary impact of nanomedicines and is a paradigm shift for the treatment of cancer."
More research is needed before scientists can determine if the method is safe for widespread use in the treatment of cancer.
Source-AFP