Post-Conference Session Summaries

“Big Payoff for a Small Wager: Nanotechnology in Oncology Patients” From Bench to Bedside Lecture

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Speakers: Mauro Ferrari, PhD, professor at the Brown Institute of Molecular Medicine and professor of experimental therapeutics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, both in Houston; and Catherine Handy, PhD, RN, AOCN^®, oncology clinical nurse specialist from New York, NY.

Each year, the Bench to Bedside lecture highlights novel scientific research and translates its importance in daily clinical practice. The 2007 lecture highlighted nanotechnology and its promise in cancer prevention, detection, and treatment.

Mauro Ferrari, PhD, lost his first wife to cancer when she was only 32. During her long battle with the disease, he developed a deep appreciation for nurses in oncology and expressed his gratitude to the large audience. His personal experience led Ferrari to apply his research to cancer care. “We need to work together,” he said, mathematicians, engineers, nurses, physicians, and more.

Experts in the field of nanotechnology have been at odds over its definition. Basically, nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. To put the extremely small size into perspective, the width of a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers. Therefore, nanodevices are small enough to enter cells, including cancer cells.

Nanotechnology has several applications to cancer care. For example, nano-sized cantilevers and nanowires will be able to detect biomarkers of cancer in biofluids, allowing for earlier detection. Nano-sized agents will retrieve and report information about the molecular makeup of diseases, which will help clinicians diagnose and stage diseases and select treatments. All of the detailed information gleaned from biofluids and the molecular makeup of diseases will led to more personalized treatment of patients with cancer. Then nanoshells will enter tumor cells and kill them selectively, leaving healthy tissue untouched. Finally, other nanoplatforms will remain in circulation to monitor patients' health status.

Catherine Handy, PhD, RN, AOCN^®, pointed out that nanotechnology already is being used in cancer care. Abraxane^® (Abraxis Oncology) is a nanovector (130 nanometers) with paclitaxel bound to human albumin, the body's natural transport protein. The albumin selectively accumulates in tumor tissue, bringing with it paclitaxel to kill cancer cells.

Another practical application of nanotechnology will be to direct nanoshells, which absorb heat, into cancer cells. When near-infrared light is turned on and off very, very rapidly near the shells, the heated shells can burn the cancer cells but leave healthy cells intact. Quantum dots, another type of nanodevice, can be used in a similar fashion.

She described the process as analogous to the climactic scene in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker and the rebel fighters flew small ships into tiny holes in the Death Star spaceship and blew it up from the inside out. The Death Star represents a cancer cell, and the small ships flown by Skywalker and friends are nanoparticles, armed with cancer treatments.

Handy hopes that nanodevices known as dendrimers will become the ultimate nanotechnology tool. About the size of a protein with a large surface area, a dendrimer is capable of holding multiple tools simultaneously, to detect cancer, take images, report information to clinicians, and target cancer cells all at the same time. The speakers believe that the very “small” advances could mean a big payoff for patients.

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