Self-Assembling Nanoparticles Could Improve Cancer Diagnosis
By Joel Lindsey
Researchers at Imperial College London have created a new nanoparticle that they say could effectively target cancer tumors and make it significantly easier for these tumors to appear in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
“By improving the sensitivity of an MRI examination, our aim is to help doctors spot something that might be cancerous much more quickly. This would enable patients to receive effective treatment sooner, which would hopefully improve survival rates from cancer,” Professor Nicholas Long, a researcher in the department of chemistry at Imperial College London, said in a press release published recently by the school.
“MRI scanners are found in nearly every hospital up and down the country and they are vital machines used every day to scan patients’ bodies and get to the bottom of what might be wrong. But we are aware that some doctors feel that even though MRI scanners are effective at spotting large tumors, they are perhaps not as good at detecting smaller tumors in the early stages,” Long said.
To enhance MRI scanners’ abilities to generate images of small tumors in their earlier stages of development, Long and the rest of the research team designed a nanoparticle coated in a specialized protein that reacts to specific enzymes from cancer cells. When the nanoparticles sensed the cancer cells, the nanoparticles underwent copper-free conjugation, which stripped the protein coating from the nanoparticles.
According to the authors of the study, the reaction caused the nanoparticles to create “a self-assembled superparamagnetic nanocluster network with T2 signal enhancement properties,” which essentially transformed the nanoparticles into much larger, easier-to-detect particles for an MRI scan.
After designing the nanoparticles, researchers tested them in petri dishes, where they successfully grew from 100 to 800 nanometers. Researchers said the growth was enough to improve the nanoparticles’ visibility for an MRI scan, but not enough to damage any surrounding tissue inside a body. From there, they tested the nanoparticles in mice.
According to the press release, the mice models indicated that the newly designed nanoparticles could enhance the sensitivity of MRI scanners and may provide a reliable way to detect and diagnose cancer in earlier stages, but the nanoparticles will need significant improvements before they can be used in humans.
“We’re now looking at fine tuning the size of the final nanoparticle so that it is even smaller but still gives an enhanced MRI image. If it is too small the body will just secrete it out before imaging, but too big and it could be harmful to the body. Getting it just right is really important before moving to a human trial,” said Dr. Juan Gallo, a researcher in the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London.
Results from the study have been published recently in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
The use of nanoparticles to improve the imaging capabilities of MRI scanners has been an active field of development lately. Medical Device Online recently published an article about researchers at Rice University and the Methodist Hospital Research Institute who developed iron oxide nanoparticles that could be magnetically guided to specific spots in the body to help improve MRI images.
Image Credit: “MRI.” Liz West. 2012 CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/