Tag: electromagnetic fields

Categories : Cancer New Compounds and TreatmentsTags :

Magnetic Fields Boost Doxorubicin Uptake in Breast Cancer Treatment

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Colourised scanning electron micrograph of a breast cancer cell. Credit: NIH

Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a non-invasive method to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy while reducing its harmful side effects.

By applying brief, localised pulses of magnetic fields, the team demonstrated a significant increase in the uptake of doxorubicin (DOX), a widely used chemotherapy drug, into breast cancer cells, with minimal impact on healthy tissues. This selective uptake enables more precise targeting of cancer cells, potentially improving treatment outcomes and reducing the adverse effects often associated with chemotherapy.

The study, led by Associate Professor Alfredo Franco-Obregón at NUS, is the first to systematically show how pulsed magnetic fields enhance DOX uptake in cancer cells. The team also showed that this approach could suppress tumours at lower drug doses.

The team’s research was published in the journal Cancers. It builds on earlier work from 2022, which first revealed that certain cancer cells are more vulnerable to magnetic field therapy.

Better chemotherapy outcomes and fewer side effects

DOX is a commonly used chemotherapy drug for breast cancer. It works by binding to DNA components and disrupting cell replication and respiration, which then kills off cancer cells. Despite its efficacy, it is a non-selective drug, which means it can also damage healthy tissues, leading to side effects ranging from mild to severe, including cardiomyopathy and muscle atrophy.

To address these challenges, the NUS researchers developed a novel approach that uses brief pulses of magnetic fields to selectively increase DOX uptake into breast cancer cells. Their study revealed the role of a calcium ion channel known as TRPC1, which is often found in aggressive cancers, including breast cancer. Magnetic field exposure activates TRPC1, enhancing its ability to facilitate the entry of DOX into cancer cells.

The researchers conducted experiments comparing the effects of the magnetic field therapy on human breast cancer cells and healthy muscle cells. They found that breast cancer cells took in significantly more DOX when exposed to magnetic pulses, while normal tissues were not targeted as much. A 10-minute magnetic field exposure reduced the drug concentration needed for similar amount of cancer killing by half, particularly at low doses of the drug.

In contrast, healthy muscle cells did not show an increase in cell death in response to the combination of DOX and magnetic pulses indicating greater protection for non-cancerous tissues.

The team also demonstrated that reducing TRPC1 expression or blocking its activity eliminated this effect, which confirms the crucial role of TRPC1 channels in the process. “Importantly, when we increased the amount of TRPC1, we observed an increase in DOX uptake – this means that TRPC1 can be used as a viable therapeutic target for aggressive cancers,” said first author Mr Viresh Krishnan Sukumar, PhD candidate at NUS Centre for Cancer Research (N2CR).

“What’s promising is that this mechanism works strongest at low drug concentrations, enabling us to target cancer cells more effectively while reducing the burden of chemotherapy on healthy tissues,” Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón added.

With breast cancer remaining the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide, the need for novel treatment strategies is urgent. “The majority of women who undergo chemotherapy experience side effects from treatment, and in some cases, doses of chemotherapy need to be reduced, or in severe cases, stopped prematurely,” said Assistant Professor Joline Lim, Principal Investigator at N2CR and Senior Consultant, Department of Haematology-Oncology, National University Cancer Institute, Singapore. “Moreover, prolonged exposure to high-dose chemotherapy can also lead to drug resistance. This targeted approach represents an excellent opportunity to potentially improve treatment outcomes while preserving patients’ quality of life.”

Advancing the frontier of precision oncology

The team’s magnetic-assisted approach addresses one of the biggest challenges of chemotherapy, namely its toxic effects on healthy tissues. By selectively enhancing drug uptake into cancer cells, this method has the potential to drastically reduce the systemic side effects often experienced by breast cancer patients. This not only improves treatment outcomes and quality of life, but also encourages earlier treatment for those hesitant about treatment side effects. The study also underscores the role of biomarkers, such as elevated TRPC1 expression, in transforming cancer care by enabling precision-driven treatment options.

Future work will focus on translating these findings into clinical practice by localising magnetic field exposure specifically to tumours in patients. This would further validate the potential to reduce systemic DOX doses while maximising localised drug delivery in cancer cells.

“Our approach will be patented and form the foundation for a startup specialising in breast cancer treatment. We are currently in discussions with potential investors in Southeast Asia and the United States to translate this technology from bench to bedside,” shared Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón. National University Cancer Institute, Singapore. “Moreover, prolonged exposure to high-dose chemotherapy can also lead to drug resistance. This targeted approach represents an excellent opportunity to potentially improve treatment outcomes while preserving patients’ quality of life.”

Source: National University of Singapore

Categories : New Compounds and TreatmentsTags :

Harnessing Magnetic Fields to Produce Safer and Cheaper Medicines

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An image of ferrofluid reacting to a magnetic field. Photo by Etienne Desclides on Unsplash

By using magnetism to eliminate unwanted ‘mirror’ counterparts inherent to the production of certain medications, they could be made safer and produced more cheaply, according to new investigations underway at Texas A&M University.

Everyday drugs, such as ibuprofen, may have an inherent flaw in their molecular structure, pairing the active, beneficial ingredient with a potentially ineffective, or even toxic, ‘mirror’ counterpart, due to being of the wrong chirality, or structural twist. New research using electromagnetic fields could help keep the effective ingredients while eliminating the unwanted counterparts. Chirality is already an important consideration in the development of new drugs.

Dr. Shoufeng Lan, assistant professor in the J Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is leading a team investigating the use of electromagnetic control over the synthesis of chiral compounds — a technique which could open up a host of applications including in the pharmaceutical industry.

“Mysteriously, all living organisms on the Earth consist of only left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars, but not their mirrored counterparts,” Prof Lan said. “The phenomenon is the so-called homochirality of life and it is the ultimate form of asymmetric synthesis.”

Prof Lan gave the example of a human hand to demonstrate the concept of chirality, noting that if you created a mirror image of your hand, it could not be perfectly superimposed over the original.

By identifying a successful method of using asymmetrical synthesis to create new versions of structures for items like ibuprofen, Prof Lan said that improved versions of generic pharmaceuticals with reduced toxicity could be produced at a lower cost than currently available due to the current purification process.

However, to achieve success, the researchers will first need figure out how to implement this magnetic effect on asymmetric synthesis at practical temperatures. The effect is currently fairly weak, even using a powerful magnetic field or at a temperature as low as -268°C.

Prof Lan noted that the 2001 Nobel Prize in chemistry’s topic was addressing chirality, which uses an existing chiral object—a catalyst molecule—to transfer chirality to the desired mirror image form as the final product.

“This Nature Communications paper demonstrated a giant atomic-scale magneto-chiral effect that is orders of magnitude stronger,” Prof Lan said. “By applying this effect, it is arguably possible to master an asymmetric synthesis or asymmetric self-assembling.”

Prof Lan said his team’s research could revolutionise the field by creating a new iteration of biomedical, chemical and pharmaceutical applications. For example, by asymmetrically synthesising only the active component of racemic Lexapro (the most common medication in the US with more than 25 million prescriptions) the research might reduce the drug’s side effects.

“We anticipate that our demonstration could lead to the creation of chiral seeds at the atomic scale,” Prof Lan said. “Upon them, we hope to transfer the chirality using cutting-edge technologies, such as a metal-organic framework, to create chiral materials from nanoscales to macroscales.”

Source: Phys.org

Journal information: Shoufeng Lan et al, Observation of strong excitonic magneto-chiral anisotropy in twisted bilayer van der Waals crystals, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22412-9

Categories : CancerTags :

Electromagnetic Fields Could Inhibit Breast Cancer Cell Spread

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A new study has shown that electrical fields can slow, and in some cases halt, the spread of breast cancer cells through the body.

The research also found how electromagnetic fields (EMFs) have the ability to hinder the number of cancer cells that can spread. Pulsed EMFs have also been shown to have some effectiveness in pain management, and low level EMFs were shown also to reduce blood glucose in animal models, a possible first step to treating diabetes.

“We think we can hinder metastasis by applying these fields, but we also think it may be possible to even destroy tumours using this approach,” said senior author Vish Subramaniam, former professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at The Ohio State University. Subramaniam retired from Ohio State in December.

“That is unclear at this stage, but we are working on understanding that – how big should the electromagnetic field be, how close should it be to the tumour? Those are the next questions we hope to answer,” he said.
Subramaniam said that this had the effect of the EMF is to slow down some of the cancer cells. “It makes some of them stop for a little while before they start to move, slowly, again. As a group, they appear to have split up. So how quickly the whole group is moving and for how long they are moving becomes affected.”

The effect was applied to human cancer cells in vitro and has not been applied in humans.

The EMFs seem to selectively slow down the cancer cells’ metabolism by affecting the electrical fields inside the individual cells—completely noninvasively and without side effects like ionising radiation, which would mean a revolutionary form of cancer treatment if it could be made to work in practice. This ability to access a cell’s internal workings is new to the study of how cancer metastasises, said Prof  Subramaniam.

“Now that we know this, we can start to answer other questions, too,” Subramaniam said. “How do we affect the metabolism to the point that we not only make it not move but we choke it, we completely starve it. Or can we slow it down to the point where it will always remain weak?”

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Jones, T.H., et al. (2021) Directional Migration of Breast Cancer Cells Hindered by Induced Electric Fields May Be Due to Accompanying Alteration of Metabolic Activity. Bioelectricity. doi.org/10.1089/bioe.2020.0048.