Nanotech may provide new radiation therapy delivery system

A team of researchers has invented a process for filling fullerenes with radioactive material, which holds great promise for delivering targeted radiation therapy.

Fullerenes are hollow carbon molecules. Virginia Polytechnic and State Institute of Medicine chemistry professor Harry C. Dorn has created new materials by filling them with atoms of various metals. For example, a fullerene that encases the contrast agent gadolinium for MRI applications. 

Dorn and Panos Fatouros, professor and chair of the Division of Radiation Physics and Biology at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, have funding from the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (NCI) to further develop, produce and test fullerene nanoparticles that can identify brain tumor cells and selectively target them for radiation therapy.

The team will be filling the fullerene “cage” with 177lutetium (177Lu), which is used to treat cancer. It will be the first time that 177Lu has been encapsulated in a fullerene and the first time any radioactive metal has been encapsulated under remote control with direct purification to a pure product.

“An advantage is that we can deliver other materials inside the fullerene with the 177Lu--such as a targeting agent (interleukin-13) and an MRI contrast agent,” said Dorn.

Creation of such a multi-modality material for use on brain tumors is a specific goal of Fatouros and Dorn's NCI-funded research project, "Metallofullerene imaging and targeting of glioma."

"The MRI agent lets you see where you are going and the 177Lu lets you treat an exact region," said Dorn. "The imaging ability also lets you see if the tumor is shrinking or getting larger."



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