New way to kill lymphoma without chemotherapy

How do you annihilate lymphoma without using any drugs?

Starve it to death by depriving it of what appears to be a favorite food: HDL cholesterol.

Northwestern Medicine® researchers discovered this with a new nanoparticle that acts like a secret double agent. It appears to the cancerous lymphoma cell like a preferred meal -- natural HDL. But when the particle engages the cell, it actually plugs it up and blocks cholesterol from entering. Deprived of an essential nutrient, the cell eventually dies.

A new study by C. Shad Thaxton, M.D., and Leo I. Gordon, M.D. shows that synthetic HDL nanoparticles killed B-cell lymphoma, the most common form of the disease, in cultured human cells, and inhibited human B-cell lymphoma tumor growth in mice.

The paper will be published Jan. 21 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This has the potential to eventually become a nontoxic treatment for B-cell lymphoma which does not involve chemotherapy," said Gordon, a co-corresponding author with Thaxton on the paper. "It's an exciting preliminary finding."

Gordon is a professor of medicine in hematology/oncology and Thaxton is an assistant professor of urology, both at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Gordon also is co-director of the hematologic malignancy program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University and a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Thaxton is also a member of the Lurie Cancer Center.

Lymphoma Gobbles HDL Cholesterol

Recent studies have shown that B-cell lymphoma is dependent on the uptake of natural HDL - short for high-density lipoprotein - from which it derives fat content, such as cholesterol.

The nanoparticle - originally developed by Thaxton as a possible therapy for heart disease - closely mimics the size, shape and surface chemistry of natural HDL particles. But it has one key difference: a five nanometer gold particle at its core. Thus, when the nanoparticle is incubated with human B-cell lymphoma cells or used to treat a mouse with the human tumor, it socks lymphoma with a double whammy. After it attaches to the lymphoma cell, the gold particle's spongy surface sucks out its cholesterol while the gold core prevents the cell from absorbing more cholesterol typically carried in the core of natural HDL particles.

The lymphoma research showed Thaxton that the HDL nanoparticle had more than one trick up its golden sleeve.

"At first I was heavily focused on developing nanoparticles that could remove cholesterol from cells, especially those involved in heart disease," Thaxton said. "The lymphoma work has broadened this focus to how the HDL nanoparticles impact both the removal and uptake of cholesterol by cells. We discovered the particles are multi-taskers."