In a recent study, scientists from MIT found a way to package three or more drugs into a novel type of nanoparticles, allowing them to design custom combination therapies for cancer. Currently, most nanoparticles that have been developed are limited to carrying only one or two drugs.

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While testing mice with the new triple combination, scientists successfully managed to develop three chemotherapy drugs and shrink tumours in adult mice.

In the same study, which appears in the Sept. 14 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers also showed that when drugs are delivered by nanoparticles, they don’t necessarily work by the same DNA-damaging mechanism as when delivered in their traditional form.

This is a significant discovery because most

“People tend to take it as a given that when you put a drug into a nanoparticle it’s the same drug, just in a nanoparticle,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a senior author of the paper, while speaking to MIT News. “Even if the nanoparticle version of the drug still kills cancer cells, it’s important to know the underlying mechanism of action when choosing combination therapies and seeking regulatory approval of new drugs, he added.

The MIT team creates particles from building blocks that already contain drug molecules. They can join the building blocks together in a specific structure and precisely control how much of each drug is incorporated.

Using the new particles, the researchers delivered doses of three chemotherapy drugs at concentrations that would be toxic if delivered by injection throughout the body, as chemotherapy drugs usually are. In mice that received this treatment, ovarian tumours shrank and the mice survived much longer than untreated mice, with few side effects.

The team is also developing nanoparticles with different combinations of drugs to test against pancreatic and other types of cancers.