chloroquine tagged posts

Chloroquine is used to overcome the liver, a major problem in nanomedicine. Credit: Houston Methodist

A new study shows that a 70-year-old malaria drug can block immune cells in the liver so nanoparticles can arrive at their intended tumor site, overcoming a significant hurdle of targeted drug delivery, according to a team of researchers led by Houston Methodist. Many cancer patients do not respond to chemotherapies because the drugs never reach the cancer cells. Even in nanomedicine, which is one of the best new methods for delivering drugs to a tumor, only about 1% of a dose of nanoparticles will successfully arrive at the intended tumor site, while the rest are filtered out by the immune cells of the liver and spleen.

Using chloroquine, the researchers not only increased the circulation...

Scientists from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the United States have found that existing anti-malaria drugs could be a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Currently, there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, which affects 10 million people worldwide. Prof Kwang-Soo Kim from McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School and A/Prof Yoon Ho Sup from NTU’s School of Biological Sciences, showed that by activating Nurr1, a class of proteins found in the brain, it protects the brain’s ability to generate dopamine neurons, for dopamine products for motor control and movement of muscles in the body.

In lab tests, the scientists found that by activating Nurr1, the rats which had Parkinson’s disease appeared to...