A team of Spanish researchers has managed to develop a very promising therapy against bladder cancer, one of the most common, most complicated to eradicate and, in the long run, with a higher cost. The technique, still in experimental phaseconsists of inoculating a single dose of tiny nanoparticles capable of traveling through the body propelled by urea present in the urine, locating tumor masses and ‘attacking’ them with a radioisotope. The first tests in mice suggest that this tool would achieve reduce tumor volume by 90%. “With this type of treatment we would increase the efficiency of the treatment, reducing hospitalization time and associated costs,” explains Samuel Sánchez, ICREA research professor at IBEC and leader of the study.
This technique, presented this Monday in an article in the magazine ‘Nature Nanotechnology’, means, on the one hand, a hopeful step forward in the search for a cure against this disease and, on the other, an exceptional scientific breakthrough. Especially because, as its promoters explain, it incorporates several unprecedented technical achievements that open the doors to developing increasingly efficient treatments against cancer. “Localized administration of nanorobots reduces the probability of generating adverse effects“explains Jordi Llop, co-author of the study and scientist at the biomaGUNE Cooperative Research Center in Biomaterials.
“With this type of treatment we would increase the efficiency of the treatment, reducing hospitalization time and associated costs”
ICREA researcher at IBEC
Innovative recipe
Today, the most common treatment for bladder cancer It consists of delivering a drug directly to the area where the tumor is located and repeating the process until, finally, the tumor mass disappears. During this procedure, patients are asked to change positions several times to ensure that the drug reaches all the walls of the bladder. And all this is normally repeated in between six and fourteen sessions. Therapy with nanorobots, on the other hand, presents a completely different approach.
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The therapy essentially consists of injecting a set of nanomachines formed by a porous silica sphere. A series of ‘ingredients’ have been incorporated into the surface of these miniature machines that fulfill a very specific function. The most important are, on the one hand, the above urease: a protein that reacts with urea present in urine and allows nanorobots to ‘propel’; and on the other hand, the radioiodinea radioisotope widely used for the localized treatment of tumors.
The nanorobots were designed to propel themselves through the bladder with one of the components of urine
Thanks to this simple but innovative ‘recipe’, scientists managed to enable tiny robots to travel through a bladder, locate a tumor and ‘bombard’ it from within until its size was drastically reduced. In tests on rodents carried out to date, it has been shown that this technique achieves reduce the size of the tumor mass up to 90%. Now, researchers say they are continuing to work to see if the tumors reproduce after treatment.