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An interdisciplinary research group from the University of the Basque Country has created a new method that allows avoiding the agglomerations of magnetic nanoparticles that arise when using magnetic hyperthermia to eliminate tumor cells.
An interdisciplinary research group from the University of the Basque Country has created a new method that allows avoiding the agglomerations of magnetic nanoparticles that arise when using magnetic hyperthermia (the localized elevation of temperature) to eliminate tumor cells. This innovative protocol represents an important advance in the field of magnetic hyperthermia antitumor therapies, a promising technique still in the clinical trial phase.
Hyperthermia is a therapy that is used in cancer treatments because tumor cells are more sensitive to heat than healthy cells. For their part, magnetic nanomaterials have the ability to produce heat when subjected to alternating magnetic fields, so that the strategic location of magnetic nanoparticles can cause the selective death of tumor cells without damaging adjacent healthy tissues.
One of the biggest limitations of this therapy, called magnetic hyperthermia, is the tendency of magnetic nanoparticles to agglomerate, a problem that is aggravated when the nanoparticles are in a living body. Agglomeration leads to an almost total loss of their capacity to produce heat, making them practically useless to carry out this very promising anti-cancer treatment with minimal adverse effects.
Through this research published in the journal 'ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces', it has been shown that an adequate coating of magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4) with long chains of the PMAO-PEG copolymer prevents the heating capacity of the nanoparticles from decreasing in the cellular medium. The therapeutic efficacy of these systems has also been proven in cultures of colorectal cancer cells, which induce cell death within 24 hours of treatment and total cell death within 48 hours.
