Calcium Phosphate Present in the Body can be Used to Treat Cancer

Biominerals such as that of calcium phosphate can now be heated to treat cancer finds a new study. The biomineral which is normally found in the bones can be transformed into fully biodegradable radio frequency (RF) agents and are also traceable by MRI and CT scans. The findings of this study are published in the scientific reports journal. In a major medical breakthrough, scientists of Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences have succeeded in turning nanoparticles of fully biodegradable radio frequency (RF) agents and made them imageable by MRI and CT scans. This has paved the way for safer, cheaper diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The project has been funded by the Dept. of Biotechnology, Govt. of India.

Development of calcium phosphate nanoparticles with imageable properties for drug delivery applications is a major innovation in the quest to develop biodegradable contrast agents for imaging (diagnostic) purposes.

Calcium phosphate is naturally found in human bones and is non-toxic and fully biodegradable. Now that its nanoparticles have been made imageable by MRI and CT scans, their accumulation in tumors can be verified and currently, the most common treatment for cancer involves radiation and use of gamma rays to kill cancer cells. However, this inflicts cells. Radiation treatment with Cyber-Knife is much more precise but very expensive.

In this situation, the most easily accessible and cheapest cancer treatment available today uses radio frequency (RF) microwaves. But for this method to work, the RF agent should be non-toxic to human body and preferentially accumulated in a tumor.

This is where the development of calcium phosphate nanoparticles as a biodegradable RF agent becomes significant says Dr. Manzoor Koyakutty, Professor, Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, and calcium phosphate is that our body does not treat it as foreign material, leading to minimum toxicity and immune rejection compared to other engineered nanoparticles which are non-biodegradable.

We have made this biomineral imageable using MRI and CT. It can be guided precisely to cancer tumors, which will enable their treatment under image guidance, using radio waves to heat up and destroy the cancerous cells. We are now conducting large animal studies, after which clinical trials will follow."

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The team of co-inventors has launched a new company which has already acquired the rights from Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences to bring the product to clinics. This spin-off venture is supported by the Biotechnology Innovation Grant of Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India.

The discovery of RF hyper-thermic property (heat generation under radio waves) of calcium phosphate was by chance. A team of researchers at Amrita Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine, including Dr. Anusha Ashokan, Dr. Vijay Harish, and Dr. GS Gowd, was doing experiments to optimize MRI imaging and RF properties of some calcium-containing materials.

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During experimentation, they accidentally found that the calcium compound was getting heated up when exposed to radio waves. This led to the optimization of calcium phosphate nanoparticles for RF applications. The scientists enhanced their hyper-thermic properties by doping them with iron nanoparticles having magnetic properties, which also helped in magnetic resonance imaging, said Dr. Vijay Harish, Physician Scientist, Dept. of Nuclear Medicine, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi.

Source-medindia