New Targeted Cancer Therapies: Immunotherapy, Nano Carriers, Thermal Photo Therapy and Nano Robots

Adapted from Chris' blog http://dbdblog.com. Please visit for more articles.

By: Christopher Fleming, Ph.D.

Photo credit: womensfitness.net at http://bit.ly/2cqESie

September 4th 2016

Louisville, KY- Either in the hospital or at home more than likely you have personally experienced the horrors of non-specific therapies against cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation are the two main culprits that in many instances are marginally effective yet create a hell-on-earth experience either personally or for those closest to you. These “medicines” or as some might say “toxins” are in most instances non-specific killing chemicals capable of wreaking havoc on healthy tissues in the hopes of slowing cancer growth through targeting cell replication. Cells that replicate fastest such as those lining the gut and skin stem cells are irreversibly damaged and die due to this harsh chemical onslaught during rounds of chemo or radiation. These deaths at the cellular level over widespread areas of the body produce devastating side effects such as pain, sores, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, white blood cell irregularities and nervous system effects such as painful neuropathy (1).

We have finally reached what has been deemed “The Golden Era of Immunotherapy” (2). Researchers and clinicians are finally tipping the scales towards recovery due to our growing knowledge of how the immune system is effected within the tumor microenvironment. Just five years earlier this unrecognized or unknown aspect of treatment had been detrimental to any immunotherapy approach including tumor specific antibodies and adoptive cell therapy. As the list of different cancers now treatable with immunotherapies continue to grow scientists are beginning to learn how individual differences between patients results in varying outcomes of treatment responses (3,4). The future of immunotherapy will involve determining the exact mechanisms behind why certain subpopulations of patients do not respond and then putting these patients into the positive response category through intervention. The top immunotherapies with their corresponding cancer can be found here at the American Cancer Society website (5). The conventional immunotherapies that have been modified over the years and are now effective options include antibodies, vaccines and adoptive cell therapies including dendritic cells and T cells especially chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that are specific for known tumor antigens.

One less conventional immunotherapy that has recently received approved for melanoma is an oncolytic virus called talimogene laherparepvec (Imlygic) (6). This virus has been bioengineered to produce the immune stimulatory protein GMCSF that is best known for activating dendritic cells to produce T cell responses against cancer. Even though this specific therapy has yet to show significant differences in patients’ overall survival it is effective at reducing tumor size which can be enough in certain circumstances for surgical removal. For more details about oncolytic viruses and their application in cancer therapy please visit this detailed and well written review (7).

Not to be completely biased towards immunotherapies, I’d like to highlight other breakthrough targeted therapies against cancer. One hot topic in cancer therapy is the use of nano drug carriers such as liposomes or carbon based nano structures wrapped in micelles (8). These nano structures incapsulating different chemical therapies create a more targeted affect compared to traditional chemotherapies. They increase the drugs time in circulation which will reduce the number of treatments needed and increase the overall cancer killing efficiency of the base drug. Another fascinating option that is becoming available is magnetic iron oxide nano particles to first specifically target tumors then heated using photo thermal technology to kill cancer cells (9). A current trend in oncology practice says if two different treatments work then combining them together might have synergistic effects. One research group is currently combining gene regulation and photo thermal therapy together for additive effects (10). Perhaps the most scifi-ish therapy to hit the news of late has been the use of bacteria-like nano robots that take chemo drugs deep into tumors and has been found effective so far in mice (11,12). Fascinating how this research group in Montreal decided to use a specific bacterial strain called Magnetococcus marinus strain MC-1 which migrates toward hypoxic areas to carry chemotherapy laced nano particles into the hypoxic center of growing tumors. For those that don’t know, tumors tend to grow so fast that blood circulation to the center is poorly developed and/or the pressure caused by such dense cellular growth prevents blood from entering the tumor causing the center of tumors to be hypoxic and necrotic. This common features allows this particular bacterial strain to specifically target hypoxic tumors. This is perhaps one of the most innovative therapies I’ve encountered utilizing many different areas of science to come up with a truly unique solution.

Ever since I read Michael Crichton’s book “Prey” I’ve always been interested in the use of nanotechnology to fight cancer (13). I truly believe that perhaps within the next century we will be able to use nano robots programmed to kill cancer to eventually rid our world of this awful disease all together. The technology is advancing too quickly to not believe such a future is possible. With the advancement of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence it will be likely that in the not so distant future we will have nano machines coursing through our blood and tissues constantly giving us updates on the internal health of our bodies. Professor Henderson at Iowa State University has already design and implemented one such nano machine capable of detecting ebola virus (14). Imagine if you can that our bodies are constantly being monitored much like malware or virus protection systems on our computers. The nano machines will be able to almost instantly kill the cancer threat and by the time we get the “ding” notice on our smart watches it’ll only say “No action is required. Threat destroyed. Have a nice day!” I only hope to see the day and possibly write an article about it.

References

1. http://bit.ly/chemoraditationsideeffects
2. http://dailym.ai/2ckQJ0V
3. http://wapo.st/2c4yxdk
4. http://bit.ly/2bOZYv2
5. http://bit.ly/2bMjCBr
6. http://bit.ly/2czVWqf
7. http://bit.ly/2c6GcdQ
8. http://bit.ly/2bXd83q
9. http://bit.ly/2c0sJj3
10. http://bit.ly/2czYt3v
11. http://bit.ly/2bP4Ujw
12. http://go.nature.com/2c6IPw3
13. http://bit.ly/2c4H1kI
14. http://bit.ly/2cqESie