by
Loren Bonner, DOTmed News Online Editor | April 24, 2012
From the April 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Duncan points out that more than 40 nanomedicine products have already been approved for clinical use. Among the oldest are the iron nanoparticles used to treat anemia. However, many of these first-generation medicines have been directed toward cancer. Liposomal and nanoparticle anti-cancer agents are routinely used, as are polymer conjugates of proteins.
The anticancer therapies Doxil (nano-liposomes) and Abaxane (albumin-based nanoparticles) are perhaps the most well-known. Doxil was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1995 to treat AIDS-associated Kaposis sarcoma, but it is now widely used to treat a variety of different cancers. The FDA approved Abraxane in 2005 to treat metastatic breast cancer and it has since entered subsequent trials to test for additional treatment uses.
Following the money
It’s hard to predict when other nanomedicines might enter the market in the coming years and decades. What is clear, however, is the growing amount of nanomedicine projects underway in the U.S.
If numbers are any indication, the National Nanotechnology Initiative — part of the NIH —reported a major jump in funding: from $50 million in 2003 to roughly $500 million for 2011, the last year data were available.
Around 70 nanomedicine projects, of an estimated 250 through the NIH, support nanomedicine and cancer. And many of these projects have entered clinical trials.
“I’d say it’s a mix of applied research and some translational projects to create a new body of knowledge, but also to develop concepts for the clinical environment,” says Dr. Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer Program. The program supports several interdisciplinary academic centers involved with nanomedicine and cancer, as well as individual research and training programs in the field.
A few factors account for the increased amount of attention and resources that
nanomedicine advocates have bestowed upon cancer. Grodzinski says that from a budgetary standpoint, it helps that there’s already a vast workforce in place dedicated to oncology issues. In addition, the mortality rate for cancer is still high and there’s an unmistakable need for more successful treatment options despite several in-roads over the past 25 years to advance cancer therapies.
“Everyone knows the side effects of chemotherapy are terrible. Nanoparticle-based delivery for a therapeutic approach can give you more localized delivery and therefore, more effective treatment with fewer side effects,” says Grodzinski.
