RESEARCHERS BUILD NANOROBOTS THAT STOP CANCER GROWTH QIMR Berghofer’s Professor Greg Anderson is helping to drive a new scientific frontier with microscopic nanorobots demonstrating what may be the future of drug delivery
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cientists are tackling cancer on a new frontier, using tiny nanorobots made of DNA and protein to kill tumour cells. The study was led by researchers at the National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and involved Professor Greg Anderson, head of the Chronic Disorders Research Program at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. The team found that the targeted nanorobots reduced the growth of breast cancer and melanoma in mice. “It shows just what is possible with contemporary biomedical technology and hints at what may be the future of intelligent drug delivery,” Professor Anderson said. The nanorobots were made using a technique called “DNA origami”, where specially constructed sheets of DNA were folded up and bound together to form a tube.
TARGETING TUMOURS WITH BLOOD CLOTS
The group embedded the blood-clotting agent thrombin within the lumen of the tubular nanorobots. “Thrombin is a naturally-occurring protein that causes blood clots to form,” Professor Anderson said. “This ability can be harnessed to kill tumour cells by developing a system where the thrombin only causes clots in the blood vessels that are feeding the tumour, and not elsewhere in the body. When that happens, the tumour cells no longer receive essential nutrients and they die. The nanorobots were designed so that thrombin was released only after it was “unlocked” by a particular protein found within the blood vessels of tumours. “The nanorobot keeps the clotting agent disguised until it reaches the place where we want it to act. In this case, that’s the tumour,” he said. “That’s why this is such a clever delivery system.”
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NOVEL APPROACH
Professor Anderson said it was a highly-innovative example of nanotechnology being used to target tumours. “This approach is novel in the way the team has combined a number of existing but different elements of nanotechnology to enable the controlled and targeted delivery of the blood-clotting agent,” he said. “Methods like this could potentially be used to deliver a wide range of drugs, and even multiple drugs at once.
There are really limitless combinations of technologies and drugs that could be tried. The applications of the technology are certainly not restricted to tumour development either.”