Direct Introduction

Lung tumors are often difficult to remove using modern surgical methods because of their deep location or because of the multiplicity of lesions - numerous foci are too small to observe. Cancer cells also create natural barriers that prevent drugs and immune cells from getting inside them. Therefore, patients often receive high doses of chemotherapy drugs that circulate throughout the body and cause serious side effects in other organs.

While a number of experimental methods for treating lung cancer have been developed and demonstrated promising results in vitro, the main problem remains: it is necessary to deliver the drug to hard-to-reach tumors with precision.

In a new study, Denise Belyukbas, Darcy Wagner and their colleagues from Lund University, Sweden, have developed a new surgical technique that allows nanoparticles to be injected directly into the blood vessels of a lung tumor. The blood vessels around and inside the tumor differ from those in normal tissues. The researchers used this to their advantage to direct nanoparticles inside large and dense solid lung tumors.

The technique of organ-restricted Vascular Delivery (Organ Restricted Vascular Delivery, ORVD) made it possible to observe in vivo lung cancer cells with nanoparticles delivered inside them – previously this could not be achieved in animal models.

Absorption of nanoparticles (red) in lung tumor cells (blue – nuclei, green – cytoskeleton); confocal microscopy.

Nanoparticles are pH-sensitive mesoporous silicon oxide particles designed to release a drug load only at a specific signal generated by cancer cells. This reduces the risk of damage to healthy lung cells and protects against undesirable side effects even with high concentrations of chemotherapeutic drugs.

Direct injection of nanoparticles into the target blood vessels of the lungs allowed to limit the accumulation only in the lungs, which ultimately led to successful and selective targeting of the tumor.

Nanoparticle ORVD is a type of isolated lung perfusion technique, which consists in direct injection of chemotherapeutic drugs into the blood vessels of the lungs.

The authors emphasize that before clinical trials, it is important to confirm the therapeutic potential of a new method of delivering specific chemotherapeutic agents to large animals.

Article by D.A.Bölükbas et al. Organ Restricted Vascular Delivery: Organ Restricted Vascular Delivery of Nanoparticles for Lung Cancer Therapy is published in the journal Advanced Therapeutics.

Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru Based on Lund University: New Promising Treatment Uses Smart Nanoparticles to Target Lung Cancer.