Introduction

Cancer rapidly overtakes heart diseases as number one killer in America.Cancer

accounts for nearly 25% of deaths in the US. In 2005, there were 559,312 cancer
deaths in the US. The risk of developing cancer is 1-in-2 for men and 1-in-3 for
women.

There is no offical cure for cancer. The standard cancer treatments are surgery,
chemotherapy and radiation. New cancer drugs are constantly being developed, but
their effectiveness is dubious. Several cancer drugs cost up to $100,000 a year
but have been shown to increase patient survival by 1-2 month. The main limitation
is the inability to deliver drugs to the desired target, which in turn leads to
undesired complications, such as deaths of healthy cells or multi-drug resistance.

Research being carried out in the field of Nanotechnology to Treat Cancer

Because of its unique size (1-100nm) and large surface-to-volume ratios,

nanotechnology offers unique solutions to overcome hurdles in cancer therapies.
Several research programs has focused efforts on developing nanodevices for early
diagnostics of cancer, delivery of cancer drugs to cancer cells, and cancer
surveillance One of most comprehensive research program is the National Cancer
Institute (NCI) Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, [http://nano.cancer.gov],
which consists of eight Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE), twelve
platform projects, and four interdisciplinary training programs across the nation.
The Alliance invests 40-50 $million a year to develop both the therapeutic and
diagnostics aspects of cancer nanotechnology. One of the highlights of the
Alliance achievements is the work led by Robert Langer, a Chemical Engineering
professor at MIT. Langer, who has previously revolutionized the fileds of drug
delivery and tissue engineering, collaborated with Omid Farokhzad, Assistant
Professor of Anaesthesia at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA, to test the
effect of aptamer-targeted nanoparticles for treatment of prostate cancer.
Aptamers are RNA-based targeting moieties, which bind to the antigens and guide
the particles towards the tumors (PNAS 103, 6315–6320; 2006).. The nanoparticles
then bind to tumor cells, gain entry into the cells, and release their contents-
the anticancer drug docetaxel. Animal experiments demonstrate that the tumor
volume was substantially reduced following the injection of these docetaxel-
encapsulated apatamer-conjugated nanoparticles. Futhermore, the experiments also a
much lower level of toxicity in comparison to current chemotherapy treatments.

Several startup companies have spawned up in the last few years, with the aim to
translate academic discovery into commercial sucesses. Recently, Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) approval of Abraxane (ABI-007), an albumin-taxol nanoparticle
for the treatment of breast cancer, has opened the doors for commerical
development of nanoscale drug delivery devices. According to Piotr Grodzinski,
Director of the NCI's Alliance in an interview by Forbes: "Today, there are 20 to
30 small companies in both diagnostics and therapeutics. A handful of those are in
clinical trials, and we expect another three or four will file applications this
year." Companies like Avidimer Therapeutics, Liquidia Technologies, Insert
Therapeutics, Intradigm, BIND Biosciences, and Carigent are working on various
approaches to develope multi-purpose nanoscale delivery platforms that enable
integration of several therapeutics, targeting technologies and other desirable
functionalities. Many of these companies take advantage of products that combine
established drugs with materials already used in FDA-approved therapies to avoid
FDA-approval hurdles. However, as nanomedicne moves from university laboratory to
clinical setting, FDA will need to come up with new approval strategies for these
novel technologies.