Background

Glioblastomas are the most common high grade (cancerous) primary brain tumour in adults. Despite the application of aggressive surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, brain tumours severely threaten human health due to their fast development and poor prognosis. The best treatment currently is surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible, followed by chemoradiation to target cells which cannot be removed by surgery. This is a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Glioblastomas are aggressive tumours and often appear resistant to treatment, probably due to the heterogeneity nature.

The ultimate goal of brain tumour-targeted drug delivery is to target drugs across the blood brain barrier and increase drug accumulation in the tumour whilst reducing toxicity in normal brain tissue. A promising drug delivery approach is magnetic drug targeting which can be realised if a drug delivery vehicle possesses a strong magnetic moment.

Technology Overview

This solution is a wearable, point of care, treatment device, which enables targeted delivery of therapeutics to brain cancer patients. This targeted approach has the potential to increase the amount of therapy reaching the tumour site, whilst reducing unwanted side effects.

The wearable device contains a magnet array, which has the magnetic strength of a MRI scanner, but is miniaturised, thereby allowing it to fit into an apparatus (helmet) tailored to the precise surface geometry of a patient’s head. This will enable a patient to wear the magnetic device whilst the therapeutic agent, attached to tiny nanoparticles, is infused into circulation.

The researchers have demonstrated that this device can effectively trap magnetic nanoparticles injected into circulation in a pre-clinical model and importantly the particles cross the blood brain barrier and enter into the brain tumour. They saw a 19% increase in amount of nanoparticles in the brain tumour and surrounding tissue areas following wearing the device.

Additionally, using the device technology in combination with a chemotherapeutic labelled to iron particles they have shown that not only does the device enable targeting to the tumour site, the chemotherapeutic has therapeutic efficacy as demonstrated by lower tumour load and survival benefits when compared to subjects receiving a standard chemotherapy regimen.

Benefits

Portable and personalised
Lightweight
Permanent magnetic field

Opportunity

Collaborative partnership (biotech/pharma with access to compounds for labelling and targeting).

Magnetic Targeted Delivery of Anti-cancer Drugs

Seeking