What is it about?
Novel plastic nanoparticles containing small amounts of a pigment were prepared and tested for their ability to kill brain and colorectal cancer cells upon illumination with visible light. We showed that even at low light doses, these nanoparticles generate toxic species derived from oxygen which damage cellular components leading to programmed cell death.
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Why is it important?
The novel plastic nanoparticles proved to be effective for the light based treatment of cancerous tumor cells and did not show intrinsic toxicity in the absence of light. Our results showed that tumor cells efficiently incorporated the particles and, regardless of the cellular location, they were very effective inducing a non inflammatory cell death. The low light and particle doses needed to achieve the killing of cancerous cells bode well for the development of successful clinical treatments based on these material.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure because it represents the culmination of the first stage of a long term project involving a group of people with very different scientific backgrounds, a truly interdisciplinary team. The final goal of the group is the development of new and efficient clinical treatment protocols and nanomaterials against very aggressive cancer diseases such as Glioblastoma. In the next stage we plant to evaluate these particles trough preclinical tests. Eventually we´d like to see these nanomaterials as a readily accessible and efficient tool to treat cancer for the benefit of society.
Luis Ibarra
Universidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Metallated porphyrin-doped conjugated polymer nanoparticles for efficient photodynamic therapy of brain and colorectal tumor cells, Nanomedicine, March 2018, Future Medicine,
DOI: 10.2217/nnm-2017-0292.
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