No Wooden Nickels

They’re ready to sting, and they know where they’re going.

They’re called “nanobees,” and they’re not insects — they’re tiny particles designed to destroy cancer cells by delivering a synthesized version of a toxin called melittin that is found in bees.

“Melittin, which would otherwise result in substantial destruction of your red blood cells and other normal tissues if it were delivered intravenously alone, is completely safe when it’s on a nanoparticle,” said Dr. Samuel Wickline, director of the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Nanobees are one of the latest examples of how nanotechnology may change the way diseases are treated.

Nanotechnology encompasses a wide array of innovations that make use of structures that are 100 nanometers or smaller. That means they generally cannot be seen under a regular microscope, but are larger than individual atoms. For example, a nanobee is less than 10 times the diameter of a red blood cell, Wickline said.

Particles on the nanoscale are small enough to enter cells, but big enough to carry large doses of drugs, said Robert Langer, Institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in the nanotech field.

“We are gradually forming a pipeline of nanotechnology-based products,” said Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a program that funds eight Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence in the U.S., including Wickline’s and Langer’s research initiatives. “These things are happening as we speak.”

There have already been two approved cancer treatments on the market that make use of nanoparticles: ovarian cancer drug Doxil, approved in 1995, and breast cancer drug Abraxane, approved in 2005. Both of these involve medication bound with nanoparticles that circulate in the bloodstream for longer than conventional drugs and are expected to migrate to the tumor site, Grodzinski said. These drugs are being tested in some of the eight clinical trials associated with the NCI nano program.