{"id":8266,"date":"2016-03-31T09:32:36","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T09:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=8266"},"modified":"2016-03-31T09:32:36","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T09:32:36","slug":"fluorescent-nanoparticle-tracks-cancer-treatments-effectiveness-in-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/fluorescent-nanoparticle-tracks-cancer-treatments-effectiveness-in-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Fluorescent Nanoparticle Tracks Cancer Treatment\u2019s Effectiveness in Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Using<\/a>
Using reporter nanoparticles loaded with either a chemotherapy or immunotherapy, researchers could distinguish between drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tumors in a pre-clinical model of prostate cancer. (Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bioengineers at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital have developed a new technique to help determine if chemotherapy is working in as few as eight hours after treatment. The new approach, which can also be used for monitoring the effectiveness of immunotherapy, has shown success in pre-clinical models.<\/span><\/p>\n

The technology utilizes a nanoparticle, carrying anti-cancer drugs, that glows green when cancer cells begin dying. Researchers, using\u00a0 the \u201creporter nanoparticles\u201d that responds to a particular enzyme known as caspase, which is activated when cells die, were able to distinguish between a tumor that is drug-sensitive or drug-resistant much faster than conventional detection methods such as PET scans, CT and MRI.\u00a0 The findings were published online March 28 in the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]Early detection of whether or not a selected treatment is working can significantly influence the direction of treatment and improve quality of life for patients.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing this approach, the cells light up the moment a cancer drug starts working,\u201d co-corresponding author Shiladitya Sengupta, Ph.D., principal investigator in BWH\u2019s Division of Bioengineering, said in a prepared statement.\u00a0 \u201cWe can determine if a cancer therapy is effective within hours of treatment.\u00a0 Our long-term goal is to find a way to monitor outcomes very early so that we don\u2019t give a chemotherapy drug to patients who are not responding to it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Early detection of whether or not a selected treatment is working can significantly influence the direction of treatment and improve quality of life for patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a pre-clinical model of prostate cancer, the team saw an approximately 400 percent increase in fluorescence in tumors that were sensitive to a common chemotherapeutic agent, paclitaxel, compared to tumors that were not sensitive to the drug.\u00a0 When the scientists separately tested an immunotherapy that targets PD-L 1 in a pre-clinical model of melanoma, after five days they also saw a significant increase in fluorescence in tumors that were treated with the therapy-loaded nanoparticles.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve demonstrated that this technique can help us directly visualize and measure the responsiveness of tumors to both types of drugs,\u201d co-corresponding author Ashish Kulkarni, an instructor in the Division of Biomedical Engineering at BWH, said in a statement. \u201cCurrent techniques, which rely on measurements of the size or metabolic state of the tumor, are sometimes unable to detect the effectiveness of an immunotherapeutic agent as the volume of the tumor may actually increase as immune cells being to flood in to attack the tumor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The engineered reporter nanoparticles, on the other hand, can provide an accurate measure of whether or not cancer cells are dying, Kulkarni said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team is actively working to design radiotracers that be used in humans, but safety and efficacy tests will need to be conducted before the technology can be converted into clinical applications.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bioengineers at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital have developed a new technique to help determine if chemotherapy is working in as few as eight hours after treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles-300x108.jpg",300,108,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",600,217,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",600,217,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",739,267,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",550,199,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",95,34,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",640,231,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",96,35,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/bt1603_bwh_nanoparticles.jpg",150,54,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Innovation<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}