New technology targets cancer cells, leaves healthy ones alone

From ScienceDaily:

Two University of Rhode Island associate professors, biophysicists Yana Reshetnyak and Oleg Andreev, have discovered a technology that can detect cancerous tumors and deliver treatment to them without the harming the healthy cells surrounding them, thereby significantly reducing side effects.

The key lies in the acidity level of cells. While normal cells maintain a pH of 7.4 with little variation, cancer cells, expend a great deal of energy as they rapidly proliferate, pumping protons outside and creating an extracellular pH level of 5.5 to 6.5.

While scientists have known about tumor acidity for years, they had not devised a way to target it.

After making some modifications to [pHLIP, the peptide that targets acidity, Reshetnyak and Andreev], they demonstrated that pHLIP could find a tumor in a mouse and deliver imaging or therapeutic agents specifically to cancer cells.

In addition to targeting cancerous tumors, the couple has discovered a novel delivery agent, a molecular nanosyringe, which can deliver and inject diagnostic or therapeutic agents specifically to cancer cells.