Research offers promising new approach to treatment of lung cancer

Researchers have developed a new drug delivery system that allows inhalation of chemotherapeutic drugs to help treat lung cancer, and in laboratory and animal tests it appears to reduce the systemic damage done to other organs while significantly improving the treatment of lung tumors.

This advance in nanomedicine combines the extraordinarily small size of nanoparticles, existing cancer drugs, and small interfering RNA (siRNA) that shut down the ability of cancer cells to resist attack.

The combination of these forces resulted in the virtual disappearance of lung tumors in experimental animals.

Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in both men and women. Despite advances in surgery, chemotherapy still plays a major role in its treatment. However, that treatment is constrained by the toxic effects of some drugs needed to combat it and the difficulty of actually getting those drugs into the lungs.

The findings were made by Oleh Taratula at Oregon State University and Tamara Minko and O. Garbuzenko at Rutgers University and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. They were just published in the Journal of Controlled Release.

“Lung cancer damage is usually not localized, which makes chemotherapy an important part of treatment,” said Taratula, an assistant professor in the OSU College of Pharmacy and co-author on this study. “However, the drugs used are toxic and can cause organ damage and severe side effects if given conventionally through intravenous administration.

“A drug delivery system that can be inhaled is a much more efficient approach, targeting just the cancer cells as much as possible,” he said. “Other chemotherapeutic approaches only tend to suppress tumors, but this system appears to eliminate it.”

A patent is being applied for on the technology, and more testing will be necessary before it is ready for human clinical trials, the researchers said.

Biomarkers and Personalized Medicine

In the past, patients with the same type and stage of lung cancer received the same treatment. Today, researchers know that no two persons are exactly the same; no patients’ tumors are exactly the same. In some cases, doctors can use information about your tumor to help them decide whether one treatment is more likely than another to work in your case. This new approach to cancer treatment, called personalized medicine, is made possible by the discovery of biomarkers. Biomarkers are molecular characteristics of a tumor that can, in some cases, be used to help make decisions about treatment. Biomarker tests available to lung cancer patients include:

EGFR mutation analysis EGFR stands for epidermal growth factor receptor. EGFRs are structures found on the surface of some cells that take in messages, encouraging those cells to grow and divide. A mutation in the EGFR gene causes these receptors to be “on” all the time, even when they should not be. This causes the tumor to grow and divide more. Some new cancer drugs, such as erlotinib (Tarceva), block these signals. These drugs, called EGFR inhibitors, may kill cancer cells and shrink the tumor or stop it from growing. A test called EGFR mutation analysis can be performed on a sample of your tumor to help your doctor decide whether your cancer is likely to respond to treatment with an EGFR inhibitor.