Though researchers have made substantial progress in developing drug-ferrying nanoparticles that successfully target tumor cells in living animals, including humans, investigators have only now started the detailed work needed to identify formulation parameters that would optimize drug delivery to malignant cells.
Now, in one of the first studies of its kind, a team of scientists at the MIT-Harvard Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) have performed systematic experiments aimed at identifying how nanoparticle formulations affect drug delivery in the body.
Reporting its work in the journal Biomaterials, a team of researchers led by Omid Farokhzad, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School and a member of the MIT-Harvard CCNE, and Robert Langer, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-principal investigator of the MIT-Harvard CCNE, studied the effects of altering nanoparticle polymer composition, drug loading, and solvents on the ability of the resulting nanoparticles to target and deliver drugs to tumors. As a targeting agent for all the polymer nanoparticles studied, the researchers used a molecule that recognizes the prostate-specific membrane antigen.