Tracking and Treating Cancer Using Nanoparticles

Nanoparticles

Medical researchers are looking at any number of new methods to get drugs to specific locations in the body. Some methods are efficient but less safe, while others are safe but often fail to deliver. Now a nontoxic nanoparticle developed by researchers at Penn State University is proving to be an all-around effective delivery system for both therapeutic drugs and the fluorescent dyes that can track their delivery.

An interdisciplinary group of materials scientists, chemists, bioengineers, physicists, and pharmacologists have shown that calcium phosphate particles ranging in size from 20 to 50 nanometers will successfully enter cells and dissolve harmlessly, releasing their cargo of drugs or dye.

The calcium phosphate nanoparticles were developed in the lab of Jim Adair, professor of materials science and engineering. The nanoparticles have several benefits other drug delivery systems do not. Unlike quantum dots, which are composed of toxic metals, calcium phosphate is a safe, naturally occurring mineral that already is present in substantial amounts in the bloodstream. “What distinguishes our method are smaller particles (for uptake into cells), no agglomeration (particles are dispersed evenly in solution), and that we put drugs or dyes inside the particle where they are protected, rather than on the surface. For reasons we don’t yet understand, fluorescent dyes encapsulated within our nanoparticles are four times brighter than free dyes,” says Thomas Morgan, a graduate student in the Adair group.

The researchers include graduate students Thomas Morgan, chemistry, Erhan Altinoglu and Amra Tabakovic, materials science and engineering, and former group member, Sara Rouse, Ph.D., in materials; graduate students Hari Muddana and Tristan Tabouillot, bioengineering; graduate student Timothy Russin, physics; graduate student Sriram Shanmugavelandy, pharmacology; Peter Butler, associate professor of bioengineering; the late Peter Eklund, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering; Jong Yun, associate professor of pharmacology; Mark Kester, professor of pharmacology; and Jim Adair, professor of materials science and engineering.

This research brief was featured in the brochure Biomedical Materials.