美国研究人员最新开发出一种纳米粒子，外表呈棒状，可以随血液流动“侦察”到肿瘤部位，帮助将药物指引到病灶处，从而有效消灭肿瘤。
美国麻省理工学院等机构的研究人员在英国新一期《自然—材料学》（Nature Materials）杂志报告说，肿瘤部位的血管通常会有病态变大的孔洞，纳米粒子进入这些孔洞中会刺激周边组织，使机体发出一种类似有伤口要求凝血物质聚集的信号。此时，另外一种携带药物的“攻击型”纳米粒子就会循信号而来，帮助消灭肿瘤。
通常情况下，注射的癌症药物最终抵达肿瘤部位的比例非常低。过去也曾研发出一些同时肩负“侦察”和“攻击”两种功能的纳米粒子，与常规方式相比可将有效抵达肿瘤部位的药物量提高几倍。
本次研究显示，把“侦察”与“攻击”两个功能分开，效果会更好。动物试验中，采取这种方式后抵达肿瘤部位的药物量与常规方式相比提高了40倍，实验鼠体内肿瘤的生长也随之停止。
不过研究人员也表示，在这项成果应用于人类临床前，还需要解决的一个问题是如何确保“侦察兵”发出的信号不为其他生理活动所干扰，因为癌症病人有时身体其他一些部位也会发出凝血信号，这时就要想办法保证药物不伤及正常的机体组织。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Nature Materials DOI:10.1038/nmat3049
Nanoparticles that communicate in vivo to amplify tumour targeting
Geoffrey von Maltzahn; Ji-Ho Park; Kevin Y. Lin; Neetu Singh; Christian Schw?ppe; Rolf Mesters; Wolfgang E. Berdel; Erkki Ruoslahti; Michael J. Sailor; Sangeeta N. Bhatia
Nanomedicines have enormous potential to improve the precision of cancer therapy, yet our ability to efficiently home these materials to regions of disease in vivo remains very limited. Inspired by the ability of communication to improve targeting in biological systems, such as inflammatory-cell recruitment to sites of disease, we construct systems where synthetic biological and nanotechnological components communicate to amplify disease targeting in vivo. These systems are composed of ‘signalling’ modules (nanoparticles or engineered proteins) that target tumours and then locally activate the coagulation cascade to broadcast tumour location to clot-targeted ‘receiving’ nanoparticles in circulation that carry a diagnostic or therapeutic cargo, thereby amplifying their delivery. We show that communicating nanoparticle systems can be composed of multiple types of signalling and receiving modules, can transmit information through multiple molecular pathways in coagulation, can operate autonomously and can target over 40 times higher doses of chemotherapeutics to tumours than non-communicating controls.
