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Metastatic cancer can now be prevented and treated with plant virus

 

In Advanced Science journal, an important research study was published recently. Researchers at the University of California in San Diego made use of a plant virus to prevent metastatic cancer of lungs. This virus was found in plants of black-eyed peas. The growth of tumors was suppressed by treating the lungs with mice, who were suffering from metastatic cancer in breast tissue. Moreover, the plant virus also prevented the spread of this cancer to the lungs of mice afflicted with disease. Lung cancer is not just the most common metastatic cancer, it is also very dangerous and difficult to cure.

At the University of California in San Diego, researchers performed a successful experiment to control the metastatic form of lung cancer. Cowpea mosaic virus is a plant virus that they developed into the form of a body injection. Although the virus does not cause any harm to humans and animals, it is still considered as a foreign body that invades the host. Consequently, it triggers an effective immune response to fight cancer in the body of the patient.

The patient’s immune system is boosted by the plant virus as it tries to identify and destroy cancer cells, which are attacking the lungs. The virus does not cause any infection in the patient’s body. At the same time, the immune cells are alarmed and they go to search and attack the incoming pathogen. To elicit such an immune response from lung tumors, researchers synthesized nanoparticles from cowpea mosaic virus. These nanoparticles effectively attacked proteins in the lungs.

The infection in the lungs was fought back by immune cells, which secreted and expressed the protein S100A9. Researchers decided to target this protein because the growth and spread of tumors was triggered by an overexpression of the protein S100A9. They used nanoparticles to target the metastasis in the lung, thereby making their novel immunotherapy successful. The nanoparticles bind with immune cells that attack tumor cells in the lungs.

The microenvironment of tumor cells in the lungs is changed by localized nanoparticles, which effectively destroy not just well defined tumors but also prevent the growth of future tumors. Researchers synthesized nanoparticles by infecting black-eyed pea plants with cowpea mosaic virus in the lab. The harvested virus appeared in the form of spherical shaped nanoparticles. The target protein molecules S100A9 were then attached to the surface of nanoparticles. The study was successful in both the prevention and treatment of metastatic lung cancer.

 

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Nanoparticles can stop antibiotic resistance in patients with respiratory ailments

At Friedrich Schiller University in Germany, a group of scientists have successfully devised an efficient method to treat lethal airway infections. They found that nanoparticles can efficiently transport antibiotics to the target destination. Presently, patients are asked to inhale drugs for treating airway infections. Thus, the passage of these drugs from the body to the pathogens causing lung infections is complicated. In fact, many drugs do not even reach the target destination let alone combating the pathogens causing airway infections.

Antibiotics need to be of a miniscule size in order to penetrate the deeper airways else they naturally bounce back and have no effect on the area infected. Moreover, antibiotics have to move across the thick layer of mucus that is formed due to airway infection. Thereafter, they have to penetrate the bacterial biofilm before reaching the infected airway passage.

Nanoparticles: a vehicle for antibiotics

To overcome the various obstacles encountered by inhaled antibiotics, these researchers developed a novel experiment. Antibiotics like Tobramycin were encapsulated in a polyester polymer. Then, they created a simulated lung situation in the laboratory and tested a nanoparticle that was specifically created for this purpose.

The movement of nanoparticle was tracked both in a static and dynamic positions within the simulated flow. In other words, these researchers developed an innovative simulation system, which exactly resembled a lung chronically infected with cystic fibrosis.

They found that nanoparticles can easily travel through the spongy network of mucus and finally reach the deeper airways to attack the pathogens. They did not encounter any difficulties in attacking the pathogens causing lung infection. Researchers applied an additional coating of polyethylene glycol to make the nanoparticle drug delivery system completely invisible to immune system.

Researchers declared that nanomaterial used in this study was biodegradable, non-toxic, and not toxic to humans. Nevertheless, researchers were clueless about how nanoparticles could fight pathogenic bacteria with so much efficiency. However, they are hopeful of making a breakthrough soon in this regard.

Researchers have presented two possibilities: i) significantly larger amounts of antibiotics are administered to the center of infection using nanoparticles as delivery carrier and ii) nanoparticle destroys the defense mechanism developed by the bacteria against the antibiotic.

This implies that these researchers have made a path-breaking discovery, which can be immensely useful in fighting lethal lung infections. Researchers have been able to tackle drug resistance of pathogenic bacteria, which cause lethal lung infections.

It is important to note that in the lower layers of the biofilm in airways, bacteria transform into persistent pathogens, which are dormant and hardly respond to any conventional drug therapies. Thus, conventional antibiotics are only able to destroy self-dividing bacteria. Using nanoparticles, antibiotics are transported into the inner layer of biofilms to combat these dormant, persistent bacteria.

This group of researchers developed nanoparticles specifically for inhalation. Conventional nanoparticles are 200 nm in size, which is too small to enter into the deeper passage of airways.  In humans, respiratory system normally filters out particles which are too large and too small. Particles of the size of 1 to 5 micrometers are only allowed to enter through airways of humans.

These researchers have pointed out that “coated nanoparticles” can effectively improve the therapeutic efficacy of antibiotics against bacterial biofilms.  This group of researchers have found a truly innovative method to tackle antibiotic resistance of pathogenic bacteria which cause lethal respiratory infections. This treatment modality was particularly useful in treating muscoviscidosis patients.

The life expectancy of such patients can be improved manifold with this path-breaking discovery. The impact of antibiotics against the bacterial biofilm certainly improved when they were delivered in “coated nanoparticles.” This discovery seems to have brought cheers to many pulmonologists who treat such patients on a daily basis.