Israeli Researchers Develop Breakthrough Cancer Treatment Using Nanoparticles

While there have been recent breakthroughs in treating breast cancer most of these involve some type of chemotherapy or other drug regimens. Now there is a new treatment for breast cancer that doesn’t use drugs at all. Instead, it uses nanoparticles.

Researchers at the Technion’s Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, in Haifa,  developed a unique treatment for triple-negative breast cancer by using advanced nanoparticles that interacted with the immune system, according to a blog from the Technion.

“This is a conceptual shift,” the researchers explained in the blog. “The therapeutic efficacy does not stem from the release of an active substance, but from the biological information encoded on the surface of the nanoparticle.”

The study was published in ACS Nano led by Ph.D. candidate Ofri Vizenblit and assisted by Ph.D. candidate Rawan Mhajne, and it was supervised by assistant professor Assaf Zinger, head of the Technion’s Bioinspired Nano Engineering Lab.

A New Approach
Triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most aggressive fast growing breast cancers and is difficult to treat. Highly resistant to conventional treatments, using nanoparticles is a completely new approach.

That’s because it lacks three cellular markers, reported The Times of Israel, estrogen, progesterone, and a protein known as HER2. Over 4,500 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in Israel and 13 percent of those are triple-negative and this accounts for 40 percent of breast cancer deaths.

But what’s different about the nanoparticle treatment is that instead of attacking the cancer cells directly, the particles – called MPsomes – change the environment that allows the cancer to develop and grow. After injecting the nanoparticles into the bloodstream, other immune cells can then attack and shrink the tumors naturally.

Trial Results
In preclinical testing on cell cultures and mouse models, the MPsomes restrained the tumor growth without harming any vital organs. The particles consist of materials that have already been classified as safe so that can help to transition to human clinical trials. But as of now, the research is still in the preclinical stage.

“I have been working for years, but I haven’t yet been able to find a shortcut to get to clinical trials,” Zinger told The Times of Israel. “That’s one of the major frustrations I have. We know how to cure cancer in mice. Now let’s focus on people.”

Nanoparticles could become the next generation of safer cancer treatments that no longer rely on dangerous drugs. But Zinger is not just focusing on breast cancer. His research group is currently working to develop other particles that treat ovarian cancer, traumatic brain injuries, and neurodegenerative pediatric diseases.