A multifunctional drug delivery system consisting of a lipid-based nanoparticle, a standard anticancer drug, and a short nucleic acid designed to augment the activity of that drug has demonstrated the ability to treat drug-resistant tumor cells.
This work, published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, suggests a novel approach to treating drug-resistant tumors, the leading cause of cancer deaths.
Tamara Minko, Ph.D., of Rutgers University, led the team of investigators that developed this novel nanotherapeutic system for treating cancer. She and her colleagues set out to target a signaling pathway that causes tumors to trigger new blood vessel growth and to develop resistance to many anticancer drugs. To shut down this pathway, the investigators developed an antisense oligonucleotide that would bind to and inactivate messenger RNA coding for a protein known as hypoxia-inducible factor-1á, which, when present, activates the targeted pathway.