Nanobubble Injection Mechanism Offers New Approach for Drug and Gene Delivery

Scientists from Rice University have teamed up with the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to study drug and gene delivery. In experimental studies, which involved drug-resistant cancer cells, the scientists discovered that when compared to conventional drug treatment, chemotherapy drugs loaded with nanobubbles were 30x more lethal to cancer cells and needed just 1/10th of the clinical dose.

Dmitri Lapotko, a physicist and biologist at Rice University, informed that at the single-cell level, the researchers are injecting cancer drugs and genetic payloads directly into the cancer cells. High drug efficacy and reduce dosage level can be obtained by injecting drugs directly into the cancer cells, without affecting the healthy cells. Lapotko has developed a plasmonic nanobubble method, which appeared in the journal, PLoS ONE and will also be published in the journal Biomaterials by April end 2012.

A major challenge in drug delivery is to deliver therapies selectively so that they target only the cancer cells without impacting the healthy cells. Differentiating healthy cells from cancer cells is costly and also consumes significant amount of time. In fact, nanoparticles have been used to target cancer cells. However, the very same nanoparticles can also be absorbed by healthy cells, which means drugs attached to nanoparticles can also destroy healthy cells along with the cancer cells.

The nanobubbles, developed by Rice’s researchers, are small pockets of water and air vapor that are formed when a group of nanoparticles are hit by a laser light and in turn get converted into heat. These nanobubbles are formed beneath the cancer cells’ surface. When these bubbles grow and explode, they open up tiny holes in the cells’ surface and enable cancer drugs to penetrate inside.

The same principle can be applied to deliver gene therapies directly into the cells. However, more research is required before this technique can be applied for human testing. Nevertheless, the new technique could redefine gene therapy and drug delivery in various applications.