Here’s how the complexity of nanotechnology simplifies health
Start Magazine conversation with scientist Ennio Tasciotti, former director of the Center for Biomimetic Medicine in Houston, on the use of nanotechnology in the medical field
The possible applications of nanotechnologies in medicine are the subject of research that is still frontier, extremely complex and expensive. If developed, however, this research can lead to decisive advances not only for communicable diseases, as demonstrated by the results obtained against CoViD-19, but also in the oncology field, both in terms of prevention, diagnosis and therapy.
A Start Magazine speaks Ennio Tasciotti, Italian scientist with long experience in the United States – where he founded and directed the Center of Medicine Biomimetics the Houston Methodist Research Institute – a pioneer of biomimicry medicine and holds several international patents on nanomaterials and biomaterials biomedical use.
The study you co-authored on the use of nanotechnology in the fight against CoViD ( Toward Nanotechnology-Enabled Approach against the CoViD-19 Pandemic, ACS Nano, 2020, 14, 6, 6383-6406 ) has received international recognition. Can you explain more specifically what has been the contribution of this branch of research to the fight against the coronavirus?
A : During the pandemic, the term "nanoparticle" became familiar to almost everyone: this is because, for the first time, two vaccines based on nanoformulations, similar in chemical composition and functioning, were developed against the coronavirus. It was a great opportunity to put the idea of developing nanoparticle-based human health products back into play: attempts have been going on for years, but in this case they have managed to reuse the efforts of the past – not always successful. – to develop vaccines.
What principle is the nanoparticle approach based on more precisely?
It is essentially a question of quantity: that of the drug to be administered. The nanoparticle behaves like a “magic bullet”, a magic bullet that contains the specific drug for the tissue to be treated, and which manages to deliver it exactly and only to this recipient tissue. The problem is that the human body is so complex that not even the most advanced nanoparticle is able to perform this task in such a surgical way. In the case of vaccines, however, there is no need, because any tissue can act as a recipient: an intramuscular injection, in any muscle, is enough to trigger the immunization process. In addition, very few nanoparticles are sufficient to make the subject express a sufficient quantity of antigen.
What are the other applications of nanotechnology against CoViD-19?
First of all, these are applications in the field of prevention, aimed at preventing the virus from entering our body: for example, by sanitizing the environments – treated through the nebulization of nanoformulations capable of rendering the virus defenseless in the air or on surfaces. -, or aiming at the protection of the mucous membranes – creating a shield against the penetration of the virus into the respiratory epithelium, for example through aerosols. But nanotechnologies have also been used in diagnostics. It must be said that any type of disease changes the composition of our body, and generally the signal of this transformation is found in the blood. By analyzing the transformations of the blood it is therefore possible to verify which is the developing disease: there are technologies developed on nanomaterials that are able to increase the sensitivity and specificity of an assay with respect to any analyte, and have been declined to measure the presence of certain metabolites resulting from coronavirus infection. Even the rapid antigen tests we currently use have a “nano” core, because the antibodies are immobilized on the detector strips thanks to inert nanoparticles.
And what about the therapies?
Here there are two alternative ways: one that aims to block the virus, preventing its replication, and another that aims instead at controlling the symptoms, identifying corrective measures to problems deriving from the infection – such as those related to the cytochemical storm, i.e. hyperactivation. inflammatory immune system. In this case we are dealing with systemic therapies, which aim for example to prevent the thrombotic event: perhaps developed in other areas, in this case the cardiovascular one, and "recycled" for the new use.
Are there other cases of diseases that can benefit from these same approaches?
Certainly the oncological ones. To diagnose a tumor that has become metastatic, it is necessary to identify the circulating tumor cells, which move through the bloodstream to colonize other parts of the body; isolating them in the blood is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Through technologies such as the so-called "liquid biopsy", it is possible to identify them, carrying out an extremely precise blood screening. However, the vast part of the research – and the related investments – on nanotechnologies continue to concern therapies: in the case of tumors, the development of targeted chemotherapies, still a "magic bullet" to affect a limited area, that of the tissues involved, and save other organs, with less impact on the patient's health. There are extremely complex nanoparticles, which are able to release the drug only in certain situations: for example, in front of a tumor cell, or in the presence of particular chemical conditions, or specific activators. In jargon we speak of "environmentally responsive materials": to develop them, the work of multidisciplinary teams is required, which includes scientists from different backgrounds – chemists, but also physicists, mathematicians and so on.
It would seem an inverse proportion: the more complex the science, the more it makes medicine less invasive, less impactful – and therefore health more easily attainable. That's it?
It is true that the growing complexity of the research is matched by the growing simplicity of the patient's experience; however, this is only valid if this complexity really manages to reach the patient, overcoming the difficulties upstream. First of all economic difficulties: the technologies we have talked about are extremely expensive, both for their development and for their regulatory approval, which can take a long time and therefore raise costs. The more we talk about complex technologies, the more laborious it is to demonstrate their functioning and therefore reach their validation by the authorities: and once validated and placed on the market, these are solutions that not everyone will be able to afford. Also for this reason, the nanoparticles actually arrived in clinical practice are the relatively simple ones: the most disruptive innovations require the implementation of an extremely in-depth, and very often blocking, regulatory procedure. In short, the institution is almost always lagging behind science: the point is to understand how long we can afford this delay.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/nanotecnologie-salute-intervista-ennio-tasciotti/ on Sat, 01 May 2021 06:00:30 +0000.