Scientists in Abu Dhabi have developed drugs that both destroy cancer calls and show up in MRI scans, which can help make treatment more effective.
The substances represent a potential new class of drugs that may be more effective than existing forms of treatment.
They have been tested only in mice but the hope is that further investigations could lead to the drugs or ones like them being used in people.
“When you’re able to inject a drug and follow it, it gives a better chance to cure the disease than injecting it and praying that it reaches the site,” said Ali Trabolsi, professor of chemistry at New York University Abu Dhabi and leader of the group behind the discovery.
“If there’s an issue in not reaching the cancer site, you can change its chemical properties in order for it to reach the site.”
MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, is based on using a magnetic field and radio waves generated by a computer to give a three-dimensional view of structures within the body.
It often involves contrast agents being injected into the body to show structures more clearly, but typically these substances do not also treat cancer.
How significant is the breakthrough?
The substances the scientists in Abu Dhabi have developed, as well as differing from typical contrast agents in that they have a therapeutic effect, are also unlike typical cancer drugs, as they have a large and complex molecular structure.
The drugs used in the latest study contain a metal, in this case manganese, and a carbon-based organic element. They are described as having interlocked structures, like knots and rings, and their shape is key to their effects in the body.
While the chemicals are inert in normal tissue, they become active in tumours, which are more acidic.
The scientists at NYUAD found that the substances suppressed the growth of an aggressive brain tumour called a glioblastoma in mice that had been injected with cancer cells to encourage tumour formation.
Mice that had been injected with cancer cells but were not treated with the drugs experienced aggressive tumour growth.
Dr Farah Benyettou, first author of the study, said the large molecules did not remain in the body for long. “We showed the molecule was eliminated from the body after three days,” she said.
The way in which the molecules are eliminated within 72 hours means the substances are “viable candidates for clinical applications with minimal long-term toxicity”, the researchers wrote in their paper.
Moving to personalised medicine
The technology could potentially be harnessed to make cancer treatment more specific to the particular patient, tying in with the move towards what is called “personalised medicine”.
The work, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, was carried out with researchers at other institutions including the University of Utah in the US, where scientists worked with mice that were genetically engineered to develop tumours.
The chemicals were developed by Dr Thirumurugan Prakasam, a research scientist at NYUAD who specialises in the synthesis of what chemists call metal-organic non-trivial structures. This name reflects that the substances contain metal and organic elements, are complex to produce or have properties that are not obvious.
Synthesising the substances involved six to eight steps, Dr Prakasam said, and initially took two to three months. Once the method had been developed, production time was reduced to about a month.
The scientists hope their findings could encourage other researchers to pay greater attention to substances similar to those they have developed.
“It’s a message to the [scientific] community they should consider other types of molecules as drugs, and move away from the drugs with small molecules,” Prof Trabolsi said.
