By Dr Clare Hoskins( Leader of the Keele Nanopharmaceutics Research Group, Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine, Keele University)
Theranostic Advances
The knowledge and fabrication of nanotechnologies
Hundreds of thousands of patients are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK. Delay in cancer diagnosis is directly linked to a reduction in the chance of survival. Hence, early diagnosis can mean the difference between life or death. Cancer Research UK estimates that up to 10,000 cancer deaths each year could be avoided through earlier diagnosis and access to optimal treatment. There is an increasing need for more effective therapies for a range of cancers including, but not limited to, liver, pancreatic and colon cancer. This is because current drug treatments are ineffective in the majority of patients, due to drug molecules being unable to enter the dense tumour tissue. Additionally, drug resistance has resulted in high rates of cancer recurrence and ultimately mortality.
Advancements in the knowledge and fabrication of nanotechnologies have led to one particularly exciting and innovative development for use in cancer diagnostics and therapeutics-‘ Theranostics.’ These multifunctional nanoparticles offer simultaneous diagnosis and therapeutic delivery. Such a platform can reduce the detrimental time lapse between diagnosis and drug administration, resulting in the increased chance of patient survival. By coupling the controlled treatment of cancer with diagnosis, a rapid and localised clinical effect can be achieved. This reduces patient discomfort and results in decreased treatment times. Work in this field has shown that coupling drug molecules onto nanotechnologies results in more effective therapies with higher drug quantities reaching the tumour.
The Keele Nanopharmaceutics group at ISTM are designing a wealth of theranostic agents for the imaging and treatment of pancreatic tumours. As the fourth leading cancer in the western world, less than one-third of pancreatic cancer patients will survive over five years after diagnosis. The gold standard treatment for pancreatic cancer is the use of gemcitabine, unfortunately, this chemotherapeutic agent proves effective in only 23.8 % of patients with the only alternative being surgical removal of the localised tumour. The treatment of pancreatic cancer is limited due to the lack of drug penetration through the solid tumours formed. In order to overcome this problem, higher drug doses are increasingly required in order for therapy to be successful. As a result, patients experience a greater degree and extent of side effects, such as increased risk of infection, bruising and bleeding, anaemia, hair loss, etc. These side effects result from the whole body circulation and lack of targeting of these toxic drug agents which can affect all areas in the body. It is intended that this novel approach will lead to the earlier treatment of pancreatic tumours and, consequently, to better patient outcomes.
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The cutting-edge work in these areas is challenging traditional approaches and pushing past current boundaries in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
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