Fine-tuning Nanotech to Target Cancer

Fine-tuning Nanotech to Target Cancer

Programmable nanoparticles have shown promise in early cancer trials, and may finally fulfill the promise of nanomedicine.
The results of the human trials are startling. Even at a lower-than-usual dose, multiple lung metastases shrank or even disappeared after one patient received only two-hour-long intravenous infusions of an experimental cancer drug. Another patient saw her cervical tumor reduce by nearly 60 percent after six months of treatment. Though the drug trial—by Bind Biosciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts—of an experimental nanotechnology-based technique was designed simply to show whether the technology is safe, the encouraging results revive hopes that nanomedicine could realize its elusive promise.