Cancer, unfortunately, is widespread throughout the world. It affects millions of lives, in many different ways, on a daily basis. Before we dive into the topic of nanomedicine and nanoparticles, lets first look at the current state of cancer treatment.

Most therapeutic options for cancer are detrimental to the body They dont just kill cancer cells, they can also damage healthy tissues causing serious side effects.

Cancer chemotherapy drugs suffer from poor biodistribution and, therefore, require high doses. [1] Resistance can also develop to one or more of the drugs being used on a regular basis. This means that oncologists must continually develop new drug cocktails to keep treating their patients.

Some of the drugs used, particularly in later rounds of chemotherapy, may also be relatively ineffective.

So far, the benefits of chemotherapy have outweighed the risks but with the dawn of the age of nanomedicine and nanoparticles, the situation may soon change.

Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. According to Johns Hopkins:

Nanomedicine can include a wide range of applications, including biosensors, tissue engineering, diagnostic devices, and many others. [It involves]harnessing nanotechnology to more effectively diagnose, treat, and prevent various diseases.

It also involves the development of new approaches to more efficiently deliver medications to the site of action with the aim of improving outcomes with less medication (and fewer medication side effects).

Nanoparticles are amongst the most promising treatment options in oncology, They have the potential to revolutionize the usual therapies by improving the usage and delivery of chemotherapy drugs [2].

The ability to control nanoparticle shape, size, and surface, as well as their ability to transport and deliver drugs to specific locations in the body, make nanoparticles highly useful in oncology[3].

Nanoparticles use has also spread to other areas of the medical world,[4] including:

Almost. Cancer is often debilitating with few treatment options that include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy. The side effects of these treatments can be detrimental to a patients way of living. They can often experience insomnia, nausea, vomiting, and weight loss among a long list of other adverse reactions [5].

With a cancer diagnosis and treatment, a patients quality of life can quickly nose-dive. But with nanomedicine, patients may experience a dramatic decrease in chemotherapy side effects, including a reduction of toxicity from the drugs used [6]. This, combined with all the other possible advantages of administering nanoparticles, makes nanomedicine an attractive new cancer therapy option.

Nanoparticles are attractive treatment options because their outer surfaces can be modified to attack specific cancer cells. They are biocompatible and biodegradable. They also offer increased stability to their drug payload[7].

Other possible advantages include:

There are three main types of nanoparticles [8] as follows:

Lipid-based nanoparticles have many advantages over other variations of nanoparticles. This accounts for their increased use in the delivery of drugs. Lipid-based nanoparticles have better biocompatibility than other nanoparticles. This means they work better with living tissue. Lipid-based nanoparticles are also more versatile, making them a better option in many therapies, like cancer treatments.

Liposomes are formulated with a wide range of natural, synthetic, and modified lipids to help them deliver drugs as well as contrast agents for medical imaging. Liposomes are used to treat cancer, fungal infections, vaccines, and more.

Polymeric nanoparticles are currently used for the following:

Polymer-based nanoparticles improve the efficiency of drugs as well as decrease drug side effects and toxicity.

Efficiently. The purpose of nanoparticles is to deliver drugs directly to the cancer cells and not the rest of the body. They are administered intravenously and are then moved around the body by the circulatory system.

Nanoparticles are designed to locate and then accumulate on the cancer tissue, penetrating through the walls of a tumor to deliver the chemotherapy drug they carry [8]. This way, the chemotherapy drug is delivered directly to the site of cancer versus distributed throughout the body. Mass distribution to both diseased and healthy tissues is usually the cause of drug side effects.

There are different methods of releasing the drugs being administered via nanomedicine [9]:

Nanoparticles can also be designed to transform under different conditions to either release or hold onto their drugs.

While widely used for cancer therapies, nanoparticles are also used for diagnostics, a type of nanomedicine referred to as nanodiagnostics[10]. Several nanoparticle formulations have already been designed for diagnostic use only. Though currently in limited use, nanodiagnostics is a growing field with imaging applications, such as use in magnetic resonance monitoring of tumor blood vessels and coronary arteries in patients.

On top of diagnostics, nanoparticles are also used in research opportunities, the treatment of cardiovascular diseases[11], and theranostics, which is a term used to describe pre-clinical research and trials of drug therapies and other treatments[12].

The production and use of nanoparticles face many challenges [13], including:

The creation process for lipid-based nanoparticles has a significant variation between each batch developed.

The manufacturing process is challenging to develop and maintain to the point that significant, quality nanoparticles can be produced.

The production of nanoparticles is time-consuming and extremely labor-intensive, requiring specialized knowledge and tools.

Nanoparticles are intended to maximize the benefit/risk ratio of therapies. Rather than causing many debilitating symptoms in the hopes of curing one disease, like current cancer treatments, nanoparticles are designed to minimize any side effects while treating that same disease.

But the technology isnt 100 percent ready for prime time yet. More research is needed and more dollars must be spent on analyzing both the effectiveness of nanomedicine as well as the long-term effects on the body.

While lipid-based nanoparticles are the most promising prospect because they are made of natural elements and have more advantages than other types of nanoparticles, they are not yet a perfect solution for drug delivery. We need more significant investments in clinical trials in both the government and private sectors to advance the technology.

Nanomedicine is used to treat a variety of different diseases and conditions, but it is in the oncology segment where nanoparticles see the most use and the most promise. To date, there are 51 nanopharmaceuticals approved for use in clinical practice[14]. More are being studied in clinical trials for cancer and other diseases.

Clearly, nanomedicine is a field to watch closely. I believe with continual research, trials, and advancements, the future of nanomedicine and nanoparticles is bright.

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Related content: Why Drug Discovery is So Hard and High Risk

References:

[1] Torchilin, V.P. and Lukyanov, A.N., 2003. Peptide and protein drug delivery to and into tumors: challenges and solutions. Drug discovery today, 8(6), pp.259-266..

[2]Shi, J., Kantoff, P.W., Wooster, R. and Farokhzad, O.C., 2017. Cancer nanomedicine: progress, challenges and opportunities. Nature Reviews Cancer, 17(1), p.20.

[3] Cho, K., Wang, X.U., Nie, S. and Shin, D.M., 2008. Therapeutic nanoparticles for drug delivery in cancer. Clinical cancer research, 14(5), pp.1310-1316.

[4] Heiligtag, F.J. and Niederberger, M., 2013. The fascinating world of nanoparticle research. Materials Today, 16(7-8), pp.262-271.

[5] Griffin, A.M., Butow, P.N., Coates, A.S., Childs, A.M., Ellis, P.M., Dunn, S.M. and Tattersall, M.H.N., 1996. On the receiving end V: patient perceptions of the side effects of cancer chemotherapy in 1993. Annals of oncology, 7(2), pp.189-195.

[6] Landesman-Milo, D., Ramishetti, S. and Peer, D., 2015. Nanomedicine as an emerging platform for metastatic lung cancer therapy. Cancer and Metastasis Reviews, 34(2), pp.291-301.

[7] Doane, T.L. and Burda, C., 2012. The unique role of nanoparticles in nanomedicine: imaging, drug delivery and therapy. Chemical Society Reviews, 41(7), pp.2885-2911.

[8] Singh, R. and Lillard Jr, J.W., 2009. Nanoparticle-based targeted drug delivery. Experimental and molecular pathology, 86(3), pp.215-223.

[9] Mura, S., Nicolas, J. and Couvreur, P., 2013. Stimuli-responsive nanocarriers for drug delivery. Nature materials, 12(11), pp.991-1003.

[10] Baetke, S.C., Lammers, T.G.G.M. and Kiessling, F., 2015. Applications of nanoparticles for diagnosis and therapy of cancer. The British journal of radiology, 88(1054), p.20150207.

[11] Godin, B., Sakamoto, J.H., Serda, R.E., Grattoni, A., Bouamrani, A. and Ferrari, M., 2010. Emerging applications of nanomedicine for the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Trends in pharmacological sciences, 31(5), pp.199-205.

[12] Lammers, T., Aime, S., Hennink, W.E., Storm, G. and Kiessling, F., 2011. Theranostic nanomedicine. Accounts of chemical research, 44(10), pp.1029-1038.

[13] Prabhakar, U., Maeda, H., Jain, R.K., Sevick-Muraca, E.M., Zamboni, W., Farokhzad, O.C., Barry, S.T., Gabizon, A., Grodzinski, P. and Blakey, D.C., 2013. Challenges and key considerations of the enhanced permeability and retention effect for nanomedicine drug delivery in oncology.

[14] Bobo, D., Robinson, K.J., Islam, J., Thurecht, K.J. and Corrie, S.R., 2016. Nanoparticle-based medicines: a review of FDA-approved materials and clinical trials to date. Pharmaceutical research, 33(10), pp.2373-2387.

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