Paul Nguyen, MD, MBA
Vice-Chair for Clinical Research, Baldwin Politi Family Endowed Chair in Oncology, and Director of Genitourinary Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
A collaboration between scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Northeastern University utilized nanotechnology (the science of engineering objects so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye) to enhance the efficacy of radiation therapy for people with common cancers. This approach works by transporting tiny particles packed with chemotherapy medicines directly into the tumors to boost the impact of radiation treatments while avoiding systemic side effects, explains G. Mike Makrigiorgos, PhD, the Director of the Medical Physics and Biophysics Division of the department of radiation therapy at Dana-Farber and a Professor at Harvard Medical School. This technology is now licensed to Nanocan Therapeutics Corporation, a biotechnology company, where it is registered as Nanoparticle Encapsulated Smart Technology (NEST™) and is undergoing Investigational New Drug (IND) enabling studies in the hopes of launching human clinical trials in 2026.
Finding a New Way to Boost Radiation Effectiveness
Radiation has long been a cornerstone of cancer treatments. Often, patients are also given infusions of chemotherapy to help cancer cells better respond to the radiation beams. But since the chemotherapy drugs are delivered into the blood stream, chemotherapy can also cause a host of toxic effects to other parts of the body, making it a difficult trade off.
“Clinicians must weigh the benefit of treating the tumorous tissue against the danger to the healthy tissue,” Makrigiorgos says. This fact led him to work closely with Sri Sridhar, PhD, Director of Nanomedicine Innovation Center and Nanomedicine Academy and Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, along with several other colleagues, to find better ways to achieve the most effective ratio.
One approach the researchers explored was brachytherapy, or internal radiation therapy, a method of delivering radioactive material by placing it inside tiny “seeds” that are inserted directly into the diseased tissue so it can act on it locally. While it is less invasive than surgery and easier to perform than external radiation treatment using large machines, it achieves comparable results to those methods.
“We came up with the idea that instead of using empty spacers in the catheter, we could insert nanoparticles and pack them with a slow-releasing chemotherapy drug on either side of the radiation material.”
G. Mike Makrigiorgos, PhD
Minimizing Side Effects, Magnifying Results
“In brachytherapy, we use catheters that are inserted directly into the tumor with the radioactive seeds secured on each side by little plastic ‘spacers,’” Makrigiorgos says. While this is effective, he wondered if the method could also provide another way to boost the radiation’s efficiency.
“We came up with the idea that instead of using empty spacers in the catheter, we could insert nanoparticles and pack them with a slow-releasing chemotherapy drug on either side of the radiation material,” he notes. This enables the benefits of the chemo to improve the radiation’s effects, but local delivery minimizes the side effects on the rest of the body.
This research concept, originally described in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics (IJROBP) back in 2010, received support from a number of organizations, including the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program and the Kayes Family Fund.
Putting the Technology to the Test
In another study also published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics several years later, a research team including Makrigiorgos, Sridhar and their colleagues tested this method on mice models with providing a way to treat cancer using less medication and causing fewer side effects.
Another study that appeared in the same journal around the same timeframe that was conducted by Sridhar and Makrigiorgos in conjunction with Robert Cormack, PhD, physicist, Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Paul Nguyen, MD, MBA, Vice-Chair for Clinical Research, Baldwin Politi Family Endowed Chair in Oncology, and Director of Genitourinary Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, also had encouraging results.
“We showed that implants slowly releasing therapeutically significant doses of docetaxel [a chemotherapy drug] placed in the prostates of dogs resulted in zero clinical toxicity while leading to cell killing effects in combination with radiation therapy. None of the devastating toxic effects associated with intravenous administration of docetaxel were observed,” Sridhar says. “Current cancer therapy is limited by off target toxicities and this approach bypasses those harmful effects entirely leading to an entirely new approach to treating cancer.”
Scaling the Technology to Expand Its Reach
Now under Nanocan’s guidance, the technology is currently in preclinical development and testing, with the hopes of soon moving to human clinical trials in prostate, pancreas and liver cancers. In the future, Nanocan also plans to explore using the seeds in a gel application that can be applied to the skin for treatment of skin, breast, cervical, oral and head and neck cancers. In addition, the company hopes to explore an inhaled formulation containing the therapy nanoparticles to treat lung and brain cancers. Nanocan researchers anticipate that these models for improving radiation effectiveness will ultimately provide new hope for people with hard-to-treat and reoccurring cancers.
“Nanocan’s goal is to help more patients in the US and around the world access more cost-efficient and effective treatments,” says Eric Broyles, JD, the founder and CEO of Nanocan. “We want to provide better, easy-to-tolerate ways to improve outcomes for people with more advanced forms of cancer globally,” he adds.
Team Members
Robert Cormack, PhD
Physicist, Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,
Sri Sridhar, PhD
Director of Nanomedicine Innovation Center and and Nanomedicine Academy, Northeastern University
G. Mike Makrigiorgos, PhD
Professor of Radiation Oncology, Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School
