Nanotechnology in cancer treatment

General knowledge about cancer

In recent years, cases of cancers have been rapidly increasing globally for various reasons, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, unhealthy diets, environment, stress, age and many more.

In fact, half of us will hear the words “you have cancer” at some point in our lives. That’s a stark figure. However, this isn’t to say we’re not making progress: more people are beating cancer today than ever before! Survival has doubled in the last 40 years. And half of the people diagnosed will survive their cancer for more than 10 years, an all-time high. While cancer treatments have advanced significantly, the need to increase their specificity and reduce systemic toxicity remains a challenge.

What is nanotechnology about, in the field of cancer treatment?

Nanotechnology, which involves controlling matter at the tiniest scale (1-100 nanometers), is capable of creating unique structures and devices which find use in cancer research and oncology. These structures, in combination with molecular discoveries, can provide tools needed to develop advanced diagnostics, treatments, and preventive measures for cancer. Nanotechnology has the potential to significantly improve cancer diagnosis and treatment, leading to a higher chance of surviving the disease.

Although scientists and engineers started exploring this field only in the 1980s, there has been significant progress in using nano-based therapies and diagnostics in the clinic, with many more interventions in development to come.

How does nanotechnology work?

Nanoparticles, being 100 - 10.000 smaller than human cells, possess the unique ability to interact with biomolecules on both the surface and inside of the cells. This incredible access across various organs holds the potential to change the ways of detecting cancer.

For example, gold nanoparticles can be bonded with different ligands on their surfaces to facilitate an understanding of how they interact with live cancer cells. By enabling rapid and sensitive detection of cancer-related molecules, nanotechnology empowers scientists to detect molecular changes, even in a small percentage of cells.

Moreover, nanomaterials possess the ability to passively accumulate at the tumor sites and target cancer cells.

Drug delivery

Nanoparticles have shown great promise in improving drug delivery, as they allow a controlled release of medications on targeted sites. Encapsulating drugs within nanoparticles protects them from degradation, delivers them directly to the target site, and releases them in a controlled manner, maximizing therapeutic effects. What’s more, they have the capability of reducing systemic doses of toxicity to healthy tissues, which would be one of the main disadvantages of chemotherapy.

Conclusions

In our modern times, cancer has become the most discussed disease, impacting a big part of our population’s lives. Even though its real causes still remain relatively unknown, there have been made significant improvements and discoveries in treatment procedures, like nanotechnology. The fight against cancer is an ongoing battle and our odds of prevailing increase day by day, thanks to the scientific community that is actively finding and perfecting new ways of beating the disease.

(Article written by Lazăr Diana-Maria)