Nat Commun: Scientists hope to combine nanotechnology with genetic engineering to develop new cancer therapies.

19, 2020 // -- The development of selective anti-cancer-active chemotherapy drugs is becoming less attractive to scientists due to the emergence of cancer resistance, poor targeting of tumor tissue, and subsequent metastasis of cancer, and in tumor-specific cell types, researchers have found that cancer stem cells are closely related to cancer progression and metastasis in patients, reflecting the ability of cancer stem cells to self-renew and enter the body's circulatory system.
Photo Source: JAIST In a recent study published in the international journal Nature Communications, scientists from Japan's Institute of Advanced Science and Technology and others combined nanotechnology with genetic engineering called photothermogenetics to develop a regulatory technique for the properties of deadly cancer stem cells, which promotes the effective elimination of cancer in the body.
researcher Eijiro Miyako says: 'We have developed a photoactive functional nanocarbon complex molecule with a polyethyl glycol (PEG)-modified carbon nano-angle (CNH) composition, and this particular carbon nano-angle carries antibody molecules that can target potential type 2 herbal acid family receptors, a photoactive functional nanocarbon complex molecule or can be used as a targeted cancer chemotherapy agent with high therapeutic potential.
In fact, nanocomposomes are effectively heated by bio-permeable near-infrared light, and when applied to cancer cells and mouse tumor models, these complexes flow through photothermal induced calcium into targeted cells expressing TRPV2 (TRPV2 is a temperature-reactive membrane protein), thereby increasing cancer cell mortality and effectively regulating stem cell properties in cancer.
current results may help researchers achieve the perfect combination of nanotechnology and genetic engineering to develop new chemotherapy methods to treat many incurable cancers and control stem cell properties of deadly cancers.
() Original source: Yu, Y., Yang, X., Reghu, S. et al. Photothermogenetic resedion of cancer stemness by near-infrared-light-activatable nanocomplexes. Nat Commun 11, 4117 (2020). doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17768-3.