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Nanoparticle Drug Patches Will Deliver Cancer Treatment Without Needles

Dislike needles pumping fluids into your body?

Dislike needles pumping fluids into your body? Fear not, for student researchers at the University of York are hard at work making syringe injections a thing of the past. Atif Syed and Zakareya Hussein, both with backgrounds in electronics and nanotechnology, are developing Nanject, a "pharmaceutical nano patch" that can "be applied to the skin and will deliver specific amounts of target drugs where necessary." The two are crowd-funding the project on Microryza.

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Two years ago Syed was doing research into swarm robotics and artificial immune systems, and found inspiration in biological species—specifically, birds. "I was always obsessed with artificial intelligence and wanted to automate a lot of things which are kind of repetitive (like people working in factories, McDonalds, etc.)," wrote Syed in an email. "At the same time, I was fascinated with nanorobotics or nanobots and wanted to do more research into this. Having people in my own family and friends who passed away due to cancer, I wanted to use nanobots to tackle and destroy cancer cells with little or no pain."

From there he came up with the idea of a nano patch. In place of needles and syringes, he would use magnetic nanoparticles that are small enough to pass through a hair follicle. He then wrote his thesis on "the synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles for its use in bio-medicine and targeted drug delivery." Syed said he is now "at the point of realizing and connecting the tiny dots into one single product—Nanject."

So how do Syed and Hussein magnetize nanoparticles? It's not traditional magnetization, according to Sayed, who notes that "the problem is not how we magnetize the nanoparticles, but what type of nanoparticles we will be magnetizing."

This image, from a related Nature paper, shows that 40 nm particles are small
enough to penetrate hair follicles, but larger ones won't.
For the full caption, check out Nature.

"The base component is iron(III) oxide (Fe2O3/hematite) which forms the basis of ferromagnets," said Syed. "The thing which is involved here is to convert the Iron(III) oxide into maghemite and then eventually converting that into magnetite, which forms the basis of the magnetic nanoparticles. Magnetite is the same mineral used to make hard disk drives or any magnetic storage device."

At this point, Syed and Hussein have what are called ferrofluids, working on the principle of ferromagnetism. Ferrofluids are found in permanent magnets. The interesting thing about these nanoparticles is that if they are small enough (approximately less than 20 nm), then they display superparamagnetic (SPM) behavior. What is that, you might ask? Well, one of its interesting properties, according to Syed, is that particles can randomly change or flip direction with a change in temperature. And when the magnetic field is removed, the net magnetization between the particles becomes zero.

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"This property allows us to take medical images and track different types of cells," said Syed. "And, more importantly, this will allow us to direct the nanoparticles to a particular area, hence localizing the target area, which, in other words, is targeted drug delivery." In essence, the two researchers will use the nanoparticles' magnetic properties to communicate and control the movement of the nanoparticles once they are inside the body. Pretty nifty.

Syeded said Nanject will, by design, be able to avoid two pitfalls of syringes: needles can push bacteria from the skin's surface into the wound, and, the reuse of syringes in the absence of sterilization can cause infections. Both scenarios expose individuals to infection, but the latter can introduce blood-born pathogens or viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C. Unsafely discarded syringes are also a problem.

"There is a huge need for something that gives no more of a drug than is required by the area of the body we want to treat."—Atif Sayed

Another thing Syed and Hussein are fighting is the ineffective use of pharmaceutical drugs. "As we get older we commonly develop multiple medical problems that are treated using pharmaceutical drugs," Syed said. "These often cause multiple side-effects, and that can be very crippling and cause depression for people with an already weakened body. Side effects can include brain fog, reduced mental capacity and reduced motor co-ordination, among others."

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"Most of this is due to administering much more than the necessary amounts of potentially poisonous medications into the blood stream since they are being distributed everywhere in the body through the circulatory system," added Syed. "There is a huge need for something that gives no more of a drug than is required by the area of the body we want to treat."

Nanject would not only serve as an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs, but to chemotherapy, which presents side effects such as neurological problems and heart damage, amongst others. Syed and Hussein want the patch to resemble a nicotine or hormonal patch. It will be made out of silicon and possibly another polymer.

Small nanoprojections, needle-like tips invisible to the human eye, will come into contact with the skin and enter the hair follicle, which provides access to the subcutaneous layer, where many vaccines are normally injected. From there, the medicine is introduced into the body through capillaries. The other nanoprojections that do not come into contact with a hair follicle will not penetrate the skin. The upside to this, according to Syed, is that even "when improperly disposed of, the patch won’t cause any accidental harm to adults or children who accidentally handle it."

"This will allow people without any special training to self-administer injections without any fear of pain and with very low risk of infection," he added.

Another project worth checking out is the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department's jet-powered injection, which also uses the power of magnetization.

Though Syed and Hussein are currently crowd-funding for Nanject on Microryza to get chemicals and raw materials, they currently have no plans for other outside investment. That said, they are happy to collaborate with companies, organizations, etc., in order to get this to general public as soon as possible.

Stay up-to-date on Sayed and Hussein's efforts with their Lab Notes.