Nano-Carrier Drugs

A study published in the journal Nanomedicine-Future Medicine reports of an engineered nanocarrier that is small enough to get past the blood-brain barrier and deliver chemotherapeutic drugs more efficiently to tumour cells in the brain.

The blood-brain barrier is a protective barrier designed to keep a stable environment surrounding the brain. During experiments, researchers found that the new method was effective in killing targeted cells. “I was very surprised by how efficiently and well it worked once we got the nanocarrier to those cells,” said study author Ann-Marie Broome from the Medical University of South Carolina. The new method could lead to new treatment options for patients with conditions such as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

GBM – is a devastating form of brain tumour with limited curative options because of its location, difficulty of surgical procedures and the inability to get drugs through the blood-brain barrier. Therefore, researchers engineered a micelle i.e. a phospholipid nanocarrier – ‘a bit of fat globule’, keeping in mind the cancer’s biology and platelet-derived growth factor (PGDF).