anti-cancer drugs tagged posts

Credit: Jian Yang, Yixue Su Artist’s conception of nanoparticle-carrying immune cells that target tumors and release drug-loaded nanoparticles for cancer treatment.

Penn State engineers have conjugating biodegradable polymer nanoparticles encapsulated with chosen cancer-fighting drugs into immune cells to create a smart, targeted system to attack cancers of specific types. “The traditional way to deliver drugs to tumors is to put the drug inside some type of nanoparticle and inject those particles into the bloodstream,” said Jian Yang, professor of biomedical engineering, Penn State. “Because the particles are so small, if they happen to reach the tumor site they have a chance of penetrating through the blood vessel wall because the vasculature of tumors is usually leaky.”

The odds of in...

A new compound has been shown to block a protein essential for the growth of many cancers. Australian researchers who collaborated with industry partner Servier included (L-R): Dr Gemma Kelly, Professor Andrew Roberts (both Walter and Eliza Hall Institute), Associate Professor Andrew Wei (The Alfred Hospital), Professor David Huang, Dr Jianan Gong, Associate Professor Guillaume Lessene (all Walter and Eliza Hall Institute), and Dr Donia Moujalled (The Alfred Hospital)

A new compound, discovered jointly by international pharmaceutical company Servier, France, and Vernalis (R&D),UK, has been shown by researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Servier to block a protein that is essential for the sustained growth of up to a quarter of all cancers...

Verrucosispora maris, the bacteria in which the enzyme was found. Credit: P. Race

Scientists at the Universities of Bristol and Newcastle have uncovered the secret of the ‘Mona Lisa of chemical reactions’ – in a bacterium that lives at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It is hoped the discovery could lead to the development of new antibiotics and other medical treatments. The Diels-Alder reaction, discovered by Nobel Prize-wining chemists Otto Diels and Kurt Alder, is one of the most powerful chemical reactions known, and is used extensively by synthetic chemists to produce many important molecules, including antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs and agrochemicals.

However, there has been much debate and controversy about whether nature uses the reaction to produce its own useful molecules...