Nanotechnology Used to Fight Lung Cancer

U.S. scientists say gene therapy delivered in lipid-based nanoparticles can reduce the number and size of human, non-small cell lung cancer in mice.

Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center say two tumor-suppressing genes given intravenously reduced cancer separately, but had the most powerful effect when administered together, cutting the number of tumors per mouse by 75 percent and the weight of tumors by 80 percent.

In cancer treatment we have combination chemotherapy, and we also combine different modes of therapy — surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Now you’ve got the possibility of combined targeted gene therapy, said Dr. Jack Roth, chairman of the M.D. Anderson Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and a senior researcher on the project.

The genes wrapped in the nanoparticles were p53 — a well-known tumor suppressor that works by causing defective cells to commit suicide and is often shut down or defective in cancer cells — and FUS1, a tumor-suppressor that is deficient in most human lung cancers. Each nanoparticle carried one of the two genes.

The study is reported in the current issue of Cancer Research.