by
Loren Bonner, DOTmed News Online Editor | April 24, 2012
From the April 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Langer is also involved with applications of nanomedicine beyond cancer therapies and diagnosis. Selecta Biosciences, another company he co-founded, has been working on developing synthetic vaccines and immunotherapies. This past November, the company announced a Phase I clinical trial to review the safety, tolerability and pharmacodynamic profile of SEL-068, a nicotine vaccine candidate for smoking cessation and relapse prevention. His third company, T2 Biosystems, engineers lab-quality diagnostic tools based on nanoparticle technology.
Nanomedicine’s Holy Grail
A futuristic view of nanomedicine might resemble something like a nanomachine that could precisely target diseased cells in the body, travel directly there, and repair them. If such a nanomachine existed, it would be the end of disease as we know it. The idea isn’t as farfetched as it might seem.
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have been able to engineer a DNA nanorobot with the ability to seek out specific cell targets and deliver molecular instruction, like telling the cancer cells to destroy themselves. Its basic sensing capabilities allow it to do this. The nanorobot can distinguish between different cells depending on what proteins are present on their surfaces. Shawn Douglas, who helped develop the technology, says the nanorobot is able to do this because it’s locked shut by special DNA sequences called “aptamers.” When the robot’s aptamer “locks” recognize the “key” proteins on a cell surface, they unzip and reveal the payload.
Tests using this nanorobot have only been conducted on leukemia and lymphoma cell cultures in the lab so far. In order to test on animals, the team will have to figure out how to make custom DNA synthesis cheaper, in addition to redesigning the nanorobot’s basic structure so that it can survive in the human bloodstream.
This nano-robot may have been what Dr. Paul Ehrlich imagined over 100 years ago when he coined the term “magic bullet.” Ehrlich, the founder of chemotherapy, is widely regarded as one of the grandfathers in the field of drug targeting. He first used this phrase “magic bullet” to describe his dream of localizing drugs specifically to their intended therapeutic target cell, or compartment of the cell. Many current nanomedicines in development today have been built upon several advanced drug delivery options that recall the early dream of Ehrlich.
The journey continues
