Combination therapy for cancer

S Vishnu Sharmaa, INN/Chennai, @Svs037 

There is some development on the health front at Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H). The researchers there have come up with a combination therapy for cancer.

Combination therapy combines more than one therapeutic procedure and  is being increasingly considered for treating cancer as it can deal with the heterogeneity of cancer cells in addition to providing synergic therapeutic effects.

The research was taken by IIT-H researchers in association with researchers from University of Hyderabad, IIT-Bombay and Bose Institute in Kolkata.

This research was led at IIT Hyderabad by Dr. Aravind Kumar Rengan, Assistant Professor, Department of Bio-Medical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad.

Researchers have developed a synergetic combination of photothermal therapy (PTT) and chemotherapy using a naturally derived anticancer agent and shown its efficacy in destroying cancer cells.

Combination therapy, which combines more than one therapeutic procedure, is being increasingly considered for the treatment of cancer because it can deal with the heterogeneity of cancer cells in addition to providing synergic therapeutic effects.

The work has recently been reported in the reputed peer-reviewed journal Nanoscale. The paper was co-authored by Ms. Tejaswini Appidi, Mr. Deepak Bharadwaj Pemmaraju, Mr. Rafiq Ahmad Khan, Mr. Syed Baseeruddin Alvi, Mr. Rohit Srivastava, Mr. Mahadeb Pal, Mr. Nooruddin Khan and Dr. Aravind Kumar Rengan.

Aravind Kumar said in photothermal therapy, a material that converts light to heat is specifically sent to the tumor location and when irradiated, causes ablation or destruction of the host cancer cells.

IR780 is one such dye that absorbs near-infrared light and generates reactive oxygen species that kills the host cell. This dye is loaded onto a suitable carrier material and targeted at the cancer tissues, he said.

The research team used liposomes – lipid nanoparticles a hundred thousand times smaller than the width of a single human hair – as the carriers for IR780 because of their low toxicity, flexibility, biocompatibility, biodegradablity and non-immunogenicity.

The team loaded liposomes not only with IR780 but also with an anticancer agent called CfAC that is extracted from the plant Anthocephalous Cadamba.These liposomes were tested against human breast cancer cells that were introduced into mice groups.

We have demonstrated the synergistic and enhanced therapeutic benefits of combinational therapy against breast cancer with minimal/no adverse effects using biocompatible and biodegradable nanomaterials, he said.