The nanocarriers selectively kill cancer cells, sparing normal ones. Credit: Maity, S. et al.
An injectable hydrogel made using specific drug-loaded nanocarriers can kill skin cancer cells, shrinking melanomas in mice1.
This drug-delivery system could potentially be used to treat skin cancer in humans, says a team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
Doxorubicin is a common anticancer drug, but it damages normal cells while destroying cancer cells. To overcome this, the scientists, led by Pralay Maiti, synthesised nanocarriers by incorporating lithium and aluminium into layered double hydroxide.
They then loaded the nanocarriers with doxorubicin and converted them into three different nanoformulations by varying the amounts of aluminium and lithium.
The team exposed specific human cervical cancer cells to the drug-loaded nanocarriers and the pure drug. The nanocarriers killed up to 72% of the cancer cells. The pure drug eliminated only 2% of the cells because the negative charge of cancer cell membranes repelled negatively charged drug molecules.
The positive charge of the nanocarriers allowed them to bind and penetrate the negatively charged cancer cell membrane. The carriers offloaded drug molecules into each cell’s cytoplasm, travelled to the nucleus, stopped DNA replication and induced cell death.
The nanocarriers released a maximum amount of drug at acidic pH levels that prevail in the tumour microenvironment. This led to selective killing of cancer cells, sparing normal cells.
