| Apr 07, 2026 |
3D printing nanocapsules could change how cancer drugs reach tumors
Elastic nanoparticles could minimize side effects of traditional cancer treatment.
|
|
(Nanowerk News) University of Mississippi research offers hope that cancer drug therapies packaged in 3D-printed carriers could deliver medication directly to tumors while reducing many of the side effects that cancer patients endure.
|
|
In a study published in Pharmaceutical Research ("Fresh 3D Printing of Spanlastics Hydrogel for Drug Delivery Applications In Vitro"), the Ole Miss team demonstrated that 3D-printed spanlastics – a tiny carrier filled with cancer-fighting drugs – could be implanted directly at the site of a tumor and kill those cells.
|
|
"This paper introduced a new 3D printing concept called FRESH 3D printing," said Mo Maniruzzaman, chair and professor of pharmaceutics and drug delivery. "It uses spanlastics as a new nano-drug delivery vehicle for anticancer drug delivery.
|
|
"We actually applied this on breast cancer cells and we got some really, really promising data."
|
|
Traditional chemotherapy is often given orally or injected into the bloodstream, where the circulatory system disperses cancer-fighting therapy throughout the body.
|
|
Anticancer therapies target cells that reproduce quickly – such as cancer – but also affect other quick-spreading cells like hair, intestinal linings and skin. This is one of the reasons that chemotherapy has so many side effects, such as hair loss, nausea, vomiting and anemia.
|
|
"Delivering chemotherapeutics is always a nasty business because of the severe side effects that the patients experience," said Jaidev Chakka, principal scientist in the School of Pharmacy. "The goal of this publication is: 'How we can minimize those side effects?'"
|
|
Delivering the drug directly to the cancer cell could reduce those side effects, said Chakka and Elom Doe, a third-year doctoral student in pharmaceutical sciences.
|
|
"Having the drug in an implant, or in our case, a 3D-printed construct, and placing that construct at the tumor sites means we can concentrate the delivery to the tumor area, instead of throughout the whole body," Doe said.
|
|
Each of the microscopic capsules was 200 to 300 nanometers in length. In comparison, a human hair is approximately 100,000 nanometers wide. Because of their tiny size, the drug nanocarriers can pass through cell membranes, delivering a high dosage of cancer-fighting medication directly to affected cells.
|
|
"Every drug for cancer has to act inside the cell, either on RNA or on DNA or inhibiting a cell pathway," Chakka said. "If the drug is not able to penetrate the cell membrane or be taken up by the cell, the effect of the drug is none.
|
|
"But when we put that drug in a nanoparticle, we are also protecting the drug from degradation, so we are actually pushing a good amount of drug molecules into the cell in one go."
|
|
Because this method focuses on a single area, it would be especially beneficial in early cancer diagnoses, before the disease has a chance to spread, or metastasize, the researchers said.
|
|
While these findings are promising, this lab-based study is only the first step in using spanlastics in cancer treatment, they caution.
|
|
"What we did is test how the drug acts in vitro or outside the body," Doe said. "We would have to test it in in-vivo models before we can think of delivering it to patients, and that's not a job you can do in a day."
|
|
At the end of those studies, however, the result could be a faster way to fight early cancer diagnoses, Chakka said.
|
|
"With this study, we did two things: One is using 3D printing as a fabricating method for a hydrogel-based drug delivery system," he said. "The second one is we demonstrated these drug delivery systems can be effective in killing cancer cells in vitro, but there is still a long way to go."
|
