A joint research group led by Professor Takashi Nakamura from Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, Kanazawa University, Professor Hideyoshi Harashima from Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hokkaido University, and Professor Kyoko Hida from Faculty of Dental Medicine, Hokkaido University, has successfully developed a new cancer therapy that uses nanoparticles to destroy blood vessels within tumors.
Recently, among cancer therapies, drug therapy has made remarkable progress, and new types of drugs, such as molecular-targeted drugs and immune checkpoint inhibitors, are now being used. However, drug resistance remains a problem in many drug therapies, and cancer has not been conquered. Under such circumstances, new types of therapies are being developed to cut off the nutritional supply to cancer cells by destroying blood vessels in the tumor tissue, i.e., tumor blood vessels. Currently under development are low molecular weight compounds, which are less selective to tumor blood vessels and have issues in terms of drug efficacy and side effects. Therefore, the development of tumor vascular disrupting agents with new drug modalities and mechanisms of action is highly desired.
This research group has found that tumor blood vessels can be selectively destroyed by combining lipid nanoparticles (*1) that target tumor blood vessels with lipid nanoparticles that activate innate immunity. The destruction of tumor blood vessels by this combination therapy caused rapid cell death (apoptosis) of cancer cells in the tumor tissue and showed a strong cancer therapeutic effect. The therapeutic effect greatly exceeded that of existing vascular disrupting agents and angiogenesis inhibitors. It also showed remarkable therapeutic effects by destroying tumor blood vessels in tumor models resistant to immune checkpoint inhibitors and in several human tumor models, including human pancreatic cancer cells. Furthermore, it has been suggested that this combination therapy operates via a novel mechanism of action involving the type I interferon signaling pathway. These findings are expected to be utilized for the development of new cancer therapies in the future.
The research results were published in the online edition ofBiomaterials on March 27, 2025, at 10:00 p.m. (JST).
Figure 1: Tumor vascular destruction by a combination of LNPs targeting tumor vessels and LNPs activating innate immunity.
Figure 2: Destruction of tumor blood vessels by combination therapy
【Glossary】
*1: Lipid nanoparticles
Nanometer-sized particles (1 nanometer = one billionth of a meter) made of lipid molecules are used as drug delivery systems to carry nucleic acids such as messenger RNA.
Click here to see the press release【Japanese only】
Journal : Biomaterials
Researcher's Information: Takashi Nakamura
PAGE TOP