TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN CANCER TREATMENT

Budny 10:00 R13

Disclaimer-- This paper partially fulfills a writing requirement for first year (freshman) engineering students at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. This paper is a student, not a professional, paper. This paper is based on publicly available information and may not provide complete analyses of all relevant data. If this paper is used for any purpose other than these authors' partial fulfillment of a writing requirement for first year (freshman) engineering students at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, the user does so at his or her own risk.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN CANCER TREATMENT

Joseph Koniszewski (jtk68@pitt.edu)

CANCER: AMERICA'S MOST NOTORIOUS KILLER

Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases in human history. and still affects millions of people today. Cancer is a unique disease; it does not only exist in one part of the body. According to the American Cancer Society, a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to spread awareness and education about this harmful disease, it can start in the lungs, colon, or even blood. It is the abnormal growth of harmful cells that prevents the body from acting the way it should [1]. It is not only an enormous burden on the health of millions of people around the world, but also has an adverse financial and emotional effect on those effected and people close to them. It is the second largest cause of deaths in the nation, with an estimated 539,430 patients expected to die this year alone. The American Cancer Society found the total cost to treat this disease in America in 2011 was $88.7 billion [2]. The major portion of this cost is the expenses of treatment. There is no cure yet, but the most popular treatments include radiation and chemotherapy. These stop the growth of the abnormal cells, but also kill healthy cells and can have harmful side effects on the patient. Administering personalized treatments and medications that are specific to each patient would be the most effective way to treat the patients. Different methods of personalized treatment are being researched today such as various types of nanoparticles. In order to find the safest and most effective methods to treat this disease will require engineering. Society will rely on engineers to incorporate knowledge in genetics and cellular biology to find an intuitive solution. This topic is especially important to me because my family has been physical, financially, and emotionally effected by this terrible disease.

PERSONALIZED MEDICINE: A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Chemotherapy and radiation, the methods most commonly used to treat cancer, are rather general. They do not adapt to each patient's unique circumstances. For most patients, they do prevent the spreading of the harmful cells, but the patients also usually experience hair loss and permanent damage to the organs. It could even be ineffective for some patients. This to me is unacceptable. One way of

improving the methods of treating harmful diseases like this is through personalized medicine. One engineer who is in the forefront of research and development of these methods is Joe W. Gray, Ph.D., a biomedical engineer and physicist. Dr. Gray is the co-leader of the Stand Up to Cancer's breast cancer "Dream Team", a Komen Scholar for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, and a key member of The Cancer Genome Atlas Project. He conducts most of his research at the Knight Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. There, he is developing a system to view cells in four dimensions, looking at cells in three dimensions with an included aspect of time. He and his colleagues are developing technologies that will take 4-D progressive and structural measurements of cells, tissues and organs that will provide a new and revolutionizing way to observe cancer's deadly development. Dr. Gray stated, "We're learning how those parts work together in individual patients ? that's the key to more effective and durable treatments [3]." His goal is to one day use a system that will profile every important trait of an individual patient's cancer like the speed of growth, likelihood of spreading, and genetics to incorporate the most effective treatments [3].

NANOPARTICLES: A DEVELOPING SOLUTION

Creating specific treatments and medications for each patient is extremely beneficial. Obtaining the information needed to do so and developing the medications and treatments can be expensive and time-consuming though. One specific technology that is being developed to solve these setbacks in personalized medicine is nanoparticle technology. In an article by the Royal Society of Chemistry, nanoparticles were described as extremely small substances that can be formed naturally or by human mediated disintegration of larger structures. They can also be synthesized into different elements depending on the temperature of the process and the nucleating agents [4]. During an American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) podcast, Nicholas Peppas Ph.D., the Cockrell Family Regents Chair Professor in the departments of chemistry, biomedical engineering, and pharmacy and the director of the Institutes of Biomaterials,

University of Pittsburgh, Swanson School of Engineering 1 10.04.16

Joseph Koniszewski

Drug Delivery, and Regenerative Medicine of the University Texas at Austin, spoke about developing nanoparticle technology. He said that they are being designed to act as intelligent biomaterials that can respond to a surrounding physiological and biological environment. Nanoparticles will also make it easier to administer medications to the patients because of their miniature size. [5]. This technology will be especially useful to treatment cancer. Since different aspects of the disease such as the rate of growth and likelihood to spread to different areas of the body is so heavily reliant on the individual patient's genetics and biological nature, delivering the most effective treatment and medications can be difficult. These little particles, which will range from 10 ? 150 nanometers in diameter, will make the process much easier. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have been testing the administering of these particles on mice. They have found that they destroy the harmful cells from within the organism and only affect the cancer tumors. Since other treatments for cancer can be damaging, this technology can potentially offer a gentler treatment on the body and leave healthy cells unharmed. [6]. They have also discovered that different combinations of materials in the particles can also cause variable effectiveness. In order to find the best combinations for different patients, professionals from different fields such as mechanical engineers, chemists, and the medical field must collaborate, develop, and design these materials to be small and efficient enough to be affordable and effective to abolish cancer. As a freshman engineering student interested in mechanical engineering, I would love to conduct research on this innovation in the future on this topic which has deeply affected my family and me.

SUPERPARAMAGNETIC IRON OXIDE NANOPARTICLES

As previously stated, the materials that are incorporated into the nanoparticles can affect the effectiveness of the treatment. One of these combinations being tested is superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles. In an academic journal written by the American Chemical Society, experimentation on these specific types of nanoparticles have been pursuing versatile and safer treatments of diseases like cancer. Most experimentation has been on mice. During this experimentation, it has been observed that they can act as magnetic and photothermal agents. This means that they can effectively target only the harmful cell and destroy them while leaving the healthy cells unharmed. This has been done by attaching the particles to therapeutic peptides, short chains of amino acid monomers which have been synthesized to be tumor targeting moieties, so that they only attach to the tumor and can be heated by an outside laser, but will destroy the

cancer cells. These tests have shown to stop tumor growth and even cause regression [7]. With further research on experimentation, these specific nanoparticles will attack cancer cells in a way that is unique for each patient, unlike other treatments, and will become a potentially proactive approach to fight cancer.

The ASME has also produced an article about superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles. They are currently being developed and have shown to be especially effective with lung cancer. Treatment with these particles can be revolutionary because patients will only need an inhaler to administer the treatment. Jayanth Panyam Ph.D., a professor in the department of pharmacy at the University of Minnesota was interviewed in this article and said, "If you can localize these particles in or next to the tumor cells then you can heat the tumor cells and then they die." First, the nanoparticles will be sucked into the lungs and then they will surround the cells with the oscillation of a magnetic field, which will heat up the particles and kill the cancer cells. This is also being tested on mice. In these experiments, the mice were injected with the nanoparticles, put inside a small magnetic coil, the magnetic field was then turned on and the tumor cells were successfully killed. Therapeutic peptides were attached to the particles so that healthy cells remained unharmed. This method only attacks the surface of the tumors right now, but can potentially serve as a safer alternative to radiation and chemotherapy. These are not only effective in attacking lung cancer and more research can perfect this treatment for other forms of cancer [8].

OVERALL ANALYSIS

Cancer has been a devastating disease to the world in various ways for a very long time. In order to find the most effective treatment, professionals from engineering and medical fields will have to work together to develop a solution to this problem that has troubled society for too long. I believe that nanoparticles can be an effective solution. Research has shown that they can be a safer alternative to other types of treatments and with further improvements, can provide the most effective treatment. It is time to put a stop to this destructive disease which has affected too many families around the world, including mine. With advancements in technology every day and millions of individuals motivated to find a cure, cancer will eventually become extinct.

SOURCES

[1] "What is Cancer?" American Cancer Society. 12.08.2015.

Accessed

10.24.2016

2

Joseph Koniszewski



cancer

[2] "Economic Impact of Cancer." American Cancer

Society. 2.06.2015. Accessed 10.24.2016



c-impact-of-cancer

[3] Michael MacRae. "Engineering a New Dimension in

Cancer Research." American Society of Mechanical

Engineers. 11.2012. Accessed 10.24.2016.



topics/articles/bioengineering/engineering-a-new-

dimension-in-cancer-research

[4] "Nanoparticle Synthesis and Assembly: Faraday

Discussion." Royal Society of Chemistry. 4.20.2015.

Accessed

10.28.2016.



-synthesis-and-assembly-faraday-discussion

[5] Dr. Nicholas Peppas. "Podcast: Nanoengineering

Intelligent Therapeutic Systems." American Society of

Mechanical Engineers. 03.2015. Accessed 10.24.2016.



topics/media/bioengineering/podcast-

nanoengineering-intelligent-therapeutic

[6] ScienceDaily. "Gentle Cancer Treatment Using

Nanoparticles Works." University of Copenhagen ?

Niels Bohr Institute. 08.03.2016. Accessed 10.24.2016.



803103750.htm

[7] "Duality of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles in Cancer

Therapy: Amplification of Heating Efficiency by

Magnetic Hyperthermia and Photothermal Bimodal

Treatment." American Chemical Society. 01.14.2016.

Accessed

10.24.2016.



9

[8] Michael Abrams. "Nanoparticles Kill Cancer."

American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 02.2015.

Accessed

10.24.2016.



topics/articles/bioengineering/nanoparticles-kill-

cancer

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I scheduled with the writing center. There, I presented her my rough draft and she reviewed it with me. She advised me to make some changes to wording of some sentences and the organization of my paper which was very beneficial to me while I devised my final draft.

I would like to thank Barbara Edelman for her help when I was writing my paper. She was my advisor for the meeting

3

Joseph Koniszewski

4

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download