Despite improvements in the past few decades with surgery, chemotherapy
and radiation therapy, a predictably curative treatment for Glioma does
not yet exist. New insights into specific gene mutations that arise in
this often deadly form of brain cancer have pointed to the potential of
gene therapy, but it's very difficult to effectively deliver toxic or
missing genes to cancer cells in the brain. Now, Johns Hopkins
researchers report they have used nano-particles to successfully deliver a
new therapy to Glioma cells in the brains of rats, prolonging their
lives.
For their studies, the Johns Hopkins team designed and tested a
variety of nano-particles made from different polymers, or plastics. When
they found a good candidate that could deliver genes to rat brain
cancer cells, they filled the nano-particles with DNA encoding an enzyme,
herpes simplex virus type 1 Thymidine kinase (HSVtk), which turns a
compound with little effect into a potent therapy that kills brain
cancer cells. When combined with the compound, called Ganciclovir, these
loaded nano-particles were 100 percent effective at killing Glioma cells
grown in laboratory dishes.
"We then evaluated the system in rats with Glioma and found that by
using a method called intra-cranial convection-enhanced delivery, our
nano-particles could penetrate completely throughout the tumor following a
single injection," says Jordan Green, Ph.D, associate professor of
biomedical engineering and ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins.
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