UH Hilo pharmaceutical researcher & team of scientists create therapy to curb toxic chemotherapy effects
Findings of team published in the scientific journal Bioconjugate Chemistry.
Virginia Tech scientists have developed a new cancer drug that uses gold nanoparticles to deliver a commonly used chemotherapy drug directly to a tumor.
Findings by lead investigator David Kingston, a Virgina Tech professor of chemistry, and his team — including Jielu Zhao, a 2016 doctoral graduate in chemistry, now a chemist at Proctor and Gamble, and Shugeng Cao, a former post-doctorate researcher also in chemistry, now an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo — were recently published in the scientific journal Bioconjugate Chemistry.
Excerpt from media release:
Virginia Tech scientists have developed a new cancer drug that uses gold nanoparticles created by the biotech firm CytImmune Sciences to deliver paclitaxel—a commonly used chemotherapy drug directly to a tumor.
Because of the direct targeting, the new effort not only increases the effectiveness of paclitaxel, it also dramatically reduces devastating side effects such as hair loss, nausea, and nerve pain.
CytImmune earlier this year asked David Kingston, a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry with the Virginia Tech College of Science, to create a paclitaxel derivative that binds to gold-based nanoparticles while in the blood stream, only releasing the drug once it’s inside a cancerous tumor. Paclitaxel chemotherapy is widely used to treat breast, ovarian, lung, and colon cancer.
“Paclitaxel side effects occur because the drug is given intravenously and thus is distributed throughout the body, and not just to the tumor,” said Kingston, who joined the Virginia Tech Department of Chemistry in 1971. “In addition, the solvent used to allow infusion has its own toxicity. Paclitaxel could be a much more effective drug if it could be targeted directly to the tumor. This would allow each dose to be given without causing significant side effects, and would thus increase the potential for cures.”
In other words, for now, delivery of a paclitaxel equals a shotgun with pellets. The blast of killing a tumor results in great collateral damage. Kingston and his team say their delivery method is like a finely tuned rifle, using CytImmune’s gold-based nanoparticles as the delivery bullet.
