SOUTH KINGSTOWN – A team of chemical engineers at the University of Rhode Island have developed a new, noninvasive system for the controlled delivery of pharmaceutical drugs.
URI professors Geoffrey Bothun and Arijit Bose and graduate student Yanjing Chen found a way to imbed drug nanoparticles into liposome shells (spherical structures made of lipids), and then to activate the release of the drug molecules using electromagnetic fields.
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Embedded in the liposome along with the drug molecules are iron oxide nanoparticles. The electromagnetic field – an alternating current set at radio frequencies – causes the iron oxide particles to break through the liposome shell, allowing the drug particles to be released.
“We’ve shown that we can control the rate and extent of the release of a model drug molecule by varying the nanoparticle loading and the magnetic field strength,” said Bothun. “We get a quick release of the drug with magnetic field heating in a matter of 30 to 40 minutes, and without heating there is minimal spontaneous leakage of the drug from the liposome.”
The new discovery was published in the June issue of ACS Nano, an American Chemical Society publication.
The researchers are currently collaborating with URI pharmacy professor Matthew Stoner to design the liposomes to target specific cells, such as cancer cells or other disease-causing cells.
“We are functionalizing the liposomes by putting in different lipids to help stabilize and target them so they can seek out particular cancer cell types,” said Stoner. “We are building liposomes that will attach to particular cells or tumor regions.”
Together, the chemical engineering research team and the pharmacy professor are already conducting in vitro cancer cell studies to achieve this goal.
