Biomaterial Modification Could Yield Better Cancer

Biomaterial Modification Could Yield Better Cancer Therapies, Study Finds

Altering the physical attributes of tiny biomaterials to enable them to interact more seamlessly with the tissues of the body could result in more effective and safer treatments for cancer. This is according to a team of researchers at Virginia Tech.

DaeYong Lee, the head of the team that conducted this research, revealed that making modest changes to biomaterials and nanoparticles used in therapy could one day result in better clinical outcomes for patients. The review focused on an area that has been understudied; the physical attributes, such as particle shape, size and stiffness. These properties play a role in directing the body’s immune system response during treatment.

Lee asserts that modifying those properties is turning out to be a powerful way of tuning the way one’s immunity functions with respect to fighting cancer. Using this approach, microphages, killer cells and other elements of the immune system can be targeted or activated to combat cancer, he adds.

Lee has proven expertise in cancer immunotherapy and biomaterials science. This unique skill set resulted in an invitation to him and his lab team to review the available studies on cancer immunotherapy in relation to biomaterials.

The research team shifted their attention from tweaking the chemical properties of therapeutic agents to finding out how tweaking their physical attributes could improve treatment outcomes. This particular review follows a previous study in which Lee and his team came up with synthetic peptides that had the effect of priming mitochondrial DNA to fight advanced breast cancer.

By paying attention to the physical attributes of therapeutic agents, cancer patients could one day access treatments that carry a bigger punch against different forms of cancer, especially in patients that haven’t responded well to the existing treatments.

While tweaking the physical attributes of therapeutic compounds has shown potential in the lab, Lee cautions that a lot has to be done before these modified particles can yield the desired effects in patients. For example, large-scale studies need to be conducted to examine the safety profile of these tweaked particles in different groups of patients.

Issues of manufacturing and scalability also need to be worked out before these treatments are commercially available. It is also important for teams from different fields, such as clinical study teams, material science teams and immunology teams to work together to make these treatments a reality outside the lab.

As the ways to enhance cancer immunotherapy increase to include modifying the physical properties of therapeutic particles, entities like Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: SCNI) could increase their chances of developing immune therapies that help a wider spectrum of patients diagnosed with cancer.

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