Glyoblastoma is an aggressive type of brain cancer with high mortality. It is difficult to treat, although there are several ways to treat it. One of the reasons why this disease is so difficult to treat is that most chemotherapeutic drugs cannot penetrate the blood vessels surrounding the brain.
Thanks to a new research of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hope was the possibility of victory over this terrible disease. There is now the development of special nanoparticles that contain medicines. In this method, drugs enter the brain more effectively, overcoming the blood -brain barrier, penetrate into the tumor and kill glyoblastoma cells.
Hematoencephalic barrier
Because the brain is a vital organ, the blood vessels surrounding the brain are much more protected from the penetration of potentially harmful molecules (and including drugs). This protection is called a hematoencephalic barrier.
The passage of drugs through a blood -brain barrier is crucial for improving the treatment of glyoblastoma, which is usually treated with the combination of surgery, irradiation and oral chemotherapy with temozolomide. Five years of survival with this disease is less than 10%.
The laboratory for the first time used a technique called a layer-by-layer assembly, which they can use to create surf-functionalized nanoparticles that carry medicines in their nucleus. The particles developed by researchers for this study are covered with a peptide called AP2, which helps nanoparticles overcome the blood -brain barrier. Researchers filled with cisplatin particles, a widely used chemotherapeutic drug. When these particles were covered with target peptide, they were able to effectively destroy glyoblastoma cells tumor in the tissue model.