New research using nanoparticles is on the frontline on the war against cancer

OU researchers are hoping extremely tiny particles outfitted with medicine can be used to discover and fight cancer more effectively.

Dr. Rajagopal Ramesh, who has worked at the OU Health and Sciences Center for the past year and a half as a researcher, is creating and testing nanoparticles on lung cancer cells to discover new ways to fight cancer.

AT A GLANCE

Nanoparticles

The particles Dr. Rajagopal Ramesh and the OU Health Sciences Center researchers are working with are 18 nanometers in size. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

The nanoparticles, which are billionths of a meter in size, are composed of an iron core and a gold layer covered in Cetuximab, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved antibody, Ramesh said. The particles are introduced into the body intravenously, according to a peer-reviewed research article in the science journal PLoS ONE.

The particles’ size allows them to maneuver through the body’s smallest blood vessels with greater ease than traditional drugs, the iron core allows the use of MR, and the golden surface helps medicine adhere to the particle while having optical properties that illuminate under laser light, Ramesh said.

Varying on the density of the gold under laser light, the particles will illuminate in shades of blue, red or green. For example, if there was a tumor infested with those particles, a doctor could shine a laser over the surface and identify the edges of a tumor, Ramesh said. Without this technology, doctors could surgically extract a portion of a tumor but leave superfluous cancer cells remaining around the edge.

The initial purpose of the research was to curb the collateral damage done by chemotherapy to healthy cells and to increase the duration of drug circulation in the body, Ramesh said.

When the size of the capsule for this therapy was brought down to the nano level, it became easier for the drug to pass through the blood vessels and have made a greate impact on tumors, Ramesh said.

The materials used for these drugs can come from a wide range of substances. Ramesh and his team have been using an iron core in the particles so they will show up using MRI.

Traditionally, to assess the effectiveness of a treatment, patients will prepare for days before undergoing an MRI, which is costly and time consuming, Ramesh said. That time can be better spent, and a few days are often the difference between life and death in cancer treatment, Ramesh said. The nanoparticles’ iron core makes it possible to perform an MRI without the days of preparation to immediately establish a treatment’s effectiveness, Ramesh said.

“What we are coming into now is the age of personalized medicine,” Ramesh said. “All cancers are unique. One person’s lung cancer is different than another person’s lung cancer.”

The gold serves other benefits as well. When gold is hit with light, it generates heat. By raising the temperature of the particles, the cancer can be burned away. Also, the golden surface is conducive for attaching antibodies, which help fight the cancer, Ramesh said. The Cetuximab antibody essentially starves cancer cells by not allowing them to receive the signals they need to grow.

The research is promising, but don’t expect the procedure to be on the market anytime soon, Ramesh said. There are many more steps to take and more research to be done before this can move to human trials, and after that, there is the hurdle of getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

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AMSTERDAM, February 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ —

150 Russian research institutes involved in long-term collaboration

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced it has reached an agreement with the Russian Foundation of Basic Research (RFBR) to provide 150 Russian research institutes with access to SciVerse ScienceDirect as well as trial access to SciVerse Scopus. This one-year license agreement is part of a formal collaboration program between Elsevier and RFBR until 2014.

Academician Prof. Vladislav Panchenko, Chairman of the RFBR Board, said of the agreement, “Access to up-to-date scientific information is a necessary element for researchers in their workflow. That is why we are glad to see us collaborate so closely with Elsevier, providing our scientists with access to a quarter of the world's scientific research. We are happy for this continuous and mutually beneficial cooperation. We hope that together we will drive Russian science to the top of global scientific scene.”

Igor Osipov, PhD, Elsevier Regional Director for Russia and Belarus added, “RFBR and its leadership has become a true partner to us – we organize joint events, run training programs across the country and strive to support and reward Russian researchers with the best available content and solutions. With this new agreement, our joint work in bringing best Russian science to the international arena and supporting Russian government efforts in building better and efficient research shall be continued in the years to come.”

About the Russian Foundation for Basic Research

The Russian Foundation for Basic Research is a self-governing foundation existing in the form of a federal institution run under the jurisdiction of the government of the Russian Federation. Its main goal is to provide support and assistance to research work in all areas of fundamental science on a competitive basis and which is called upon to build new relationships between scientists and the state. The foundation distributes federal funding to the most advanced research projects originating both from Russian universities as well as from institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The RFBR is part of G8 scientific foundations family and enjoys close cooperation ties with all key funding bodies across the globe: from North America to EU, China and Japan. Financing refereed projects across disciplines, key attention is given to physics, technology and nano-technology, medicine, various interdisciplinary studies, which Russian government identified as priority in R&D development until 2020.

About the Elsevier SciVerse Suite

The SciVerse® suite of search and discovery offerings provides the global research community access to a constantly expanding universe of content and solutions which can now be accessed in one platform. The suite currently includes SciVerse ScienceDirect®, the world's largest source of peer-reviewed content containing more than 10 million articles, and SciVerse Scopus®, an abstract and citation database containing 41 million records, 70% with abstracts and nearly 19,500 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide. The platform also includes SciVerse Hub which enables researchers to perform a single search across all of the SciVerse content as well as targeted web content with results ranked by relevancy and without duplication. Applications and Developer Network allow the scientific community to build, find and use applications that enhance the SciVerse research experience.

About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse® ScienceDirect®, SciVerse® Scopus®, Reaxys®, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal® suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

Media contact
Galina Yakshonak
Elsevier, Russia
+7-985-72-779-67
g.yakshonak@elsevier.com

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