14 DAY TRIAL // A collaboration of researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announces the development of nanoparticles that can carry drugs throughout the human body. These particles can be inserted into pills that are consumed orally.
This is the first time since nanoparticles began being used as drug carriers when they can be inserted into the digestive tract – and absorbed from the intestines – rather than necessitate injecting directly into the affected area. The result could hold great promise for further improving drug delivery methods.
One of the main advantages of nanoparticles over other types of drug delivery systems is that they can target diseased areas of the human body directly. When treating cancer, for example, the particles can delivery chemotherapy drugs directly into tumors, reducing the damage these chemical cause on nearby, healthy tissue.
Until now, nanoparticles laden with drugs had to be injected in the body directly, since they could not be absorbed in the gut like nutrients are. This limitation has thus far prevented their adoption into mainstream use, but that may soon become a thing of the past.
Details of the new class of nanoparticles appear in a paper published in the November 27 online issue of the top journal Science Translational Medicine. The MIT/BWH team used pills containing drug-laden particles to deliver insulin in diabetic mice with great success.
The secret to this research was coating the particles with antibodies that latch on to specific receptors on cells in the human gut, allowing them to pass through intestinal walls. Once they are out of the gut, the particles enter the bloodstream, and then home in on their target.
This ability “illustrates a very general concept where we can use these receptors to traffic nanoparticles that could contain pretty much anything. Any molecule that has difficulty crossing the barrier could be loaded in the nanoparticle and trafficked across,” says MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering, Rohit Karnik.
According to the researchers, this technique could be especially useful in treating high cholesterol, arthritis or diabetes, conditions that require a lot of care and numerous injections. Patients would be far more likely to stick to their therapies if the latter involved taking pills, not getting regular shots.
“If you were a patient and you had a choice, there’s just no question: Patients would always prefer drugs they can take orally,” concludes paper author Robert Langer, who is the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, and also a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.