Natural nanoparticle can unlock cancer

A team of scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford University has created a unique drug delivery system by manipulating a naturally occurring nanoparticle known as a ’vault’.

The team’s method places bryostatin 1 - a potent protein kinase C modulator - within nanoscale vaults for safe delivery to cells. Once there, it can be activate latent HIV cells, and can be used deliver chemotherapy drugs more effectively and in smaller doses.

“These particular vaults can completely internalise their cargo, adding an extra layer of protection for healthy cells

Study leader Leonard Rome

The vaults, which were discovered in the 1980s by lead researcher Leonard Rome, number in the thousands inside each of our cells, research suggests.

Since the initial discovery, Rome and his collaborators have been able to create empty vaults that could be used to delivery drugs to specific cells within a patient.

Though yet to be proven in human clinical trials, the researchers suggest that using the vault method, drugs could be delivered directly to cancer cells, effectively eliminating the drugs’ contact with healthy cells and should greatly reduce the treatment’s side effects.

Researchers have also suggested that the technique could be developed to target HIV/AIDS.

Unfortunately, HIV can be reduced to undetectable levels but can still accumulate and resurface via cellular reservoirs.

The researchers found that one way to eliminate the reservoirs was to activate the latent HIV, making it susceptible to antiviral drugs - through the use of bryostatin 1.

However, bryostatin 1 is toxic in large doses.

Rome, alongside UCLA researcher Daniel Buehler, bioengineered a vault with a special lipophilic core, which binds lipids and thereby creates an environment that allows compounds like bryostatin 1 to be loaded into the vaults.

Results suggest that these bioengineered vaults only release the bryostatin 1 when delivered to HIV cells.

“Because latent virus is untreatable, latent reservoirs are the chief impediment to curing HIV right now,” said Jerome Zack, co-director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.

“If we can activate the latent virus, essentially turning it on, we can treat it and eradicate it, thus curing the patient of HIV infection,” said Zack.

Likewise, Rome said: “These experiments demonstrate the novel ability of these vaults to encapsulate therapeutic compounds up to more than 2,000 molecules per single vault.

“And these particular vaults can completely internalise their cargo, adding an extra layer of protection for healthy cells.”