Nanoparticles are molecules built up of specific atoms.
Generally, they are about 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Nanotechnology may turn stem cells into breast-cancer smart bombs.
City of Hope researchers are collaborating to develop new therapies using neural stem cells and nanoparticles.
M. Houman Fekrazad, M.D. is here to discuss where City of Hope sees nanotechnology in cancer treatment in the next 5-10 years.
Selected Podcast
Nanotechnology and Cancer
Featured Speaker:
Learn more about Dr. Fekrazad
M. Houman Fekrazad, M.D.
Triple board-certified in hematology, medical oncology and internal medicine, Dr. Fekrazad earned his medical doctorate as a valedictorian student from Shiraz University School of Medicine in Iran. He then took positions as a sports medicine physician with the Basketball Federation of Iran in Tehran, followed by a leadership role with the Iran Helicopter Support and Renewal Company’s occupational medical office, also in Tehran. He went on to complete both an internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he was chosen “Resident of the Year.” He then served as an attending physician at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, later moving on to the UNM in Albuquerque where he became “Fellow of the Year” while completing his hematology and oncology fellowship. He was selected as a member of Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Medical Society for outstanding achievements during fellowship. Thereafter, he was appointed to the faculty of the UNM Cancer Center’s faculty before coming to City of Hope.Learn more about Dr. Fekrazad
Transcription:
Nanotechnology and Cancer
Melanie Cole (Host): Nanotechnology. This has the potential to radically change how we diagnose and treat cancer. My guest today is Dr. M. Houman Fekrazad. He's triple board certified in hematology, medical oncology and internal medicine at City of Hope. Welcome to the show, Dr. Fekrazad. Tell us, what is nanotechnology and how is it being used in cancer treatment?
Dr. Houman Fekrazad (Guest): Thank you so much for inviting me for this interview. As you mentioned, I am a medical oncologist by training. I have passion to treat patients with advanced cancer and hope that one day we can cure the majority of patients with this deadly disease. Nanotechnology, is a rapidly growing science. I would say in the last 10, 15 years, we have learned a lot of information on how to use this technology and not only to provide rapid and sensitive detection of cancer related targets but also we can use this technology to cure and control the disease by delivering chemotherapy and anti-cancer agents into the targeted areas of the body where they are involved with the cancer. So, I believe that the use of nanotechnology is for diagnosis and for treatment of cancers but this is a largely still in the development phase. So, I would say within the next few years we will learn more and, hopefully, we can use this technology to diagnose and treat patients with advanced cancer.
Melanie: Tell us about the technology itself. What is involved and why is this so advanced?
Dr. Fekrazad: Nano scale objects are extremely small. So, imagine that there are like a hundred nano meters. This can be used for by putting the agent into the nanoparticles and then delivering to the target organ. Again, this is being applied to almost every field you can imagine: in bioscience, in electronics, in magnetics, in optics, in information technology and also in many other fields of medical and non-medical fields. So, this is a very exciting and very fascinating field that a lot of scientists have passion towards and explore more in this field.
Melanie: So, what are these nanoparticles and does this involve stem cells? Things that are able to target the cancer itself?
Dr. Fekrazad: Yes.
Melanie: Explain it a little bit.
Dr. Fekrazad: Yes, ma’am. So, nanoparticles are particles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. So, it is a very small particle. This particle is defined as small object that behaves as a whole unit with respect to its transport and properties. That's the terminology for nanoparticles. So, it's extremely small and are classified according to the diameter of this particle. Sometimes we call them small nanoparticles or large nanoparticles and they have different shapes. You can make it from different elements. So, we can make nanoparticles from crystals or you can make nanoparticles from carbon or you can make nanoparticles from silicon. So, you can make them from different elements, basically. Nanoparticles have at least one dimension between 1 and 10 nanometers and then narrow size distribution which means that they can squeeze in into different organs if you can use them in humans, basically.
Melanie: That is absolutely fascinating and if something like a stem cell migrates to tumors, can you load them up with these nanoparticles and then, how do they do that? They target the tumor directly and don't destroy all of the surrounding tissue?
Dr. Fekrazad: That is correct. So, what usually happen is, tumor cells they have antigens on the surface of the cell. So, with the nanoparticles, we can detect and give them the information of what cells they should target because normal cells, they don't carry the same antigens that the cancer cells have. I mean, this is different from cancer to cancer. I mean, this is not like every single cancer carry one antigen. They have thousands and thousands of different antigens on the surface cells and different ways of finding that. But we can basically gauge our nanoparticles to go the specific cells of interest and then attack them. So, we can ask the nanoparticles to go to find-- I can give you an example of one of the common diseases that we treat these days is estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. We can ask the nanoparticles to go and find estrogen receptor cells on the tumor cells and then deliver the chemotherapy or anti-cancer treatment into the cells and, obviously, destroy them but not attacking the normal cells when they do not carry that specific antigen.
Melanie: So, what are some of the benefits? What is the difference between what we've typically seen as treatment? What are the benefits and is this being used right now?
Dr. Fekrazad: The benefit, as I've mentioned before, is having the targeted therapy. When we give chemotherapy to our patients in 2015, unfortunately, we destroy the normal cell while we're destroying the cancer cells because the majority of the chemo that we are using these days, they don't have the specific function to destroy the cancer cell. We do have some chemos that are designed and if you're using that and if they approved, they go and control the cancer cells but not all chemo. I can definitely assure you that most chemotherapy agents can affect the normal cell. By using the nanotechnolody, we can eliminate that kind of side effects and we can attack only cancer cells and not destroying or causing side effects for all the normal cells.
Melanie: Dr. Fekrazad, you own a patent on a patch that can deliver chemotherapy through the skin. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Dr. Fekrazad: Sure. I've been working on this project since 2008--for the last 7 years. We want to eliminate giving chemotherapy through the intravenous route or through the oral route. The main reason is when we give IV chemotherapies or oral chemotherapies, the chemo goes through the human and then, after two to three weeks, disappears. I mean, the body metabolizes the chemo. To prevent having, you know, enough level of chemotherapy into the blood, we have to give a higher dose of chemo because we cannot give chemotherapy every day. We just give it every two to three weeks. So we have to give a higher dose and before it comes to the lower does, they kind of bolus and give another round of chemotherapy to the patient. So, basically, we call it the “trough and peak” phenomena which will go up to the hill and come back down. That is peak of chemo causes a lot of toxicity but if we give chemotherapy in a continuous fashion, the way I am designing this project is giving chemotherapy through the skin in a continuous fashion, we don't call it the peak and trough phenomena, we will have the dose that we need to give to the patient to eradicate the cancer cells, we give it in continuous fashion. So, I think there are a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of, you know, appreciation to this science that we are able to do this kind of project these days, you know. I worked with a few scientist at the California Institute of Technology, CalTech, and so with their expertise in what they do, we are aiming to be able to deliver chemotherapy in a continuous fashion through the skin.
Melanie: In just a last few minutes, where do you see nanotechnology in cancer treatment in the next five to ten years and why should patients come to City of Hope for their care?
Dr. Fekrazad: That's a very good question. You know, as a physician, as a scientist, we always have the passion to advance science and that we always want to feel that we can control and potentially cure the cancers. I mean, if you ask an oncologist who are in the academic institution, they all have the same aim. They really want to find a cure for this deadly disease. So, I think that nanotechnology has a very important role. I believe that with nanotechnology, we can early detect the cancer; we can present some futile surgeries for some of our patients where the cancer is already advanced but we cannot detect them with the modality of the treatment and the modality of imaging that we have such as CT scan or PET scan and we can potentially find the areas of the cancer quicker and, obviously, giving chemotherapy to only the site of the cancer and not the normal cells. The reason for patients to come to City of Hope is because we are on cutting edge of medicine. We are like several other institutions across the country. We have knowledge about cancer; we have an expertise about how to tackle the cancer and we have a lot of new projects and new treatment strategies that we are aiming for cure. So, I encourage patients to seek medical attention at academic institution and with this level of knowledge and City of Hope is one of them across the country. I believe if patients live in South California, they would benefit by exploring this option.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Fekrazad. It's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating information. You’re listening to City of Hope Radio. For more information, you can go to cityofhope.org. That's cityofhope.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
Nanotechnology and Cancer
Melanie Cole (Host): Nanotechnology. This has the potential to radically change how we diagnose and treat cancer. My guest today is Dr. M. Houman Fekrazad. He's triple board certified in hematology, medical oncology and internal medicine at City of Hope. Welcome to the show, Dr. Fekrazad. Tell us, what is nanotechnology and how is it being used in cancer treatment?
Dr. Houman Fekrazad (Guest): Thank you so much for inviting me for this interview. As you mentioned, I am a medical oncologist by training. I have passion to treat patients with advanced cancer and hope that one day we can cure the majority of patients with this deadly disease. Nanotechnology, is a rapidly growing science. I would say in the last 10, 15 years, we have learned a lot of information on how to use this technology and not only to provide rapid and sensitive detection of cancer related targets but also we can use this technology to cure and control the disease by delivering chemotherapy and anti-cancer agents into the targeted areas of the body where they are involved with the cancer. So, I believe that the use of nanotechnology is for diagnosis and for treatment of cancers but this is a largely still in the development phase. So, I would say within the next few years we will learn more and, hopefully, we can use this technology to diagnose and treat patients with advanced cancer.
Melanie: Tell us about the technology itself. What is involved and why is this so advanced?
Dr. Fekrazad: Nano scale objects are extremely small. So, imagine that there are like a hundred nano meters. This can be used for by putting the agent into the nanoparticles and then delivering to the target organ. Again, this is being applied to almost every field you can imagine: in bioscience, in electronics, in magnetics, in optics, in information technology and also in many other fields of medical and non-medical fields. So, this is a very exciting and very fascinating field that a lot of scientists have passion towards and explore more in this field.
Melanie: So, what are these nanoparticles and does this involve stem cells? Things that are able to target the cancer itself?
Dr. Fekrazad: Yes.
Melanie: Explain it a little bit.
Dr. Fekrazad: Yes, ma’am. So, nanoparticles are particles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. So, it is a very small particle. This particle is defined as small object that behaves as a whole unit with respect to its transport and properties. That's the terminology for nanoparticles. So, it's extremely small and are classified according to the diameter of this particle. Sometimes we call them small nanoparticles or large nanoparticles and they have different shapes. You can make it from different elements. So, we can make nanoparticles from crystals or you can make nanoparticles from carbon or you can make nanoparticles from silicon. So, you can make them from different elements, basically. Nanoparticles have at least one dimension between 1 and 10 nanometers and then narrow size distribution which means that they can squeeze in into different organs if you can use them in humans, basically.
Melanie: That is absolutely fascinating and if something like a stem cell migrates to tumors, can you load them up with these nanoparticles and then, how do they do that? They target the tumor directly and don't destroy all of the surrounding tissue?
Dr. Fekrazad: That is correct. So, what usually happen is, tumor cells they have antigens on the surface of the cell. So, with the nanoparticles, we can detect and give them the information of what cells they should target because normal cells, they don't carry the same antigens that the cancer cells have. I mean, this is different from cancer to cancer. I mean, this is not like every single cancer carry one antigen. They have thousands and thousands of different antigens on the surface cells and different ways of finding that. But we can basically gauge our nanoparticles to go the specific cells of interest and then attack them. So, we can ask the nanoparticles to go to find-- I can give you an example of one of the common diseases that we treat these days is estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. We can ask the nanoparticles to go and find estrogen receptor cells on the tumor cells and then deliver the chemotherapy or anti-cancer treatment into the cells and, obviously, destroy them but not attacking the normal cells when they do not carry that specific antigen.
Melanie: So, what are some of the benefits? What is the difference between what we've typically seen as treatment? What are the benefits and is this being used right now?
Dr. Fekrazad: The benefit, as I've mentioned before, is having the targeted therapy. When we give chemotherapy to our patients in 2015, unfortunately, we destroy the normal cell while we're destroying the cancer cells because the majority of the chemo that we are using these days, they don't have the specific function to destroy the cancer cell. We do have some chemos that are designed and if you're using that and if they approved, they go and control the cancer cells but not all chemo. I can definitely assure you that most chemotherapy agents can affect the normal cell. By using the nanotechnolody, we can eliminate that kind of side effects and we can attack only cancer cells and not destroying or causing side effects for all the normal cells.
Melanie: Dr. Fekrazad, you own a patent on a patch that can deliver chemotherapy through the skin. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Dr. Fekrazad: Sure. I've been working on this project since 2008--for the last 7 years. We want to eliminate giving chemotherapy through the intravenous route or through the oral route. The main reason is when we give IV chemotherapies or oral chemotherapies, the chemo goes through the human and then, after two to three weeks, disappears. I mean, the body metabolizes the chemo. To prevent having, you know, enough level of chemotherapy into the blood, we have to give a higher dose of chemo because we cannot give chemotherapy every day. We just give it every two to three weeks. So we have to give a higher dose and before it comes to the lower does, they kind of bolus and give another round of chemotherapy to the patient. So, basically, we call it the “trough and peak” phenomena which will go up to the hill and come back down. That is peak of chemo causes a lot of toxicity but if we give chemotherapy in a continuous fashion, the way I am designing this project is giving chemotherapy through the skin in a continuous fashion, we don't call it the peak and trough phenomena, we will have the dose that we need to give to the patient to eradicate the cancer cells, we give it in continuous fashion. So, I think there are a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of, you know, appreciation to this science that we are able to do this kind of project these days, you know. I worked with a few scientist at the California Institute of Technology, CalTech, and so with their expertise in what they do, we are aiming to be able to deliver chemotherapy in a continuous fashion through the skin.
Melanie: In just a last few minutes, where do you see nanotechnology in cancer treatment in the next five to ten years and why should patients come to City of Hope for their care?
Dr. Fekrazad: That's a very good question. You know, as a physician, as a scientist, we always have the passion to advance science and that we always want to feel that we can control and potentially cure the cancers. I mean, if you ask an oncologist who are in the academic institution, they all have the same aim. They really want to find a cure for this deadly disease. So, I think that nanotechnology has a very important role. I believe that with nanotechnology, we can early detect the cancer; we can present some futile surgeries for some of our patients where the cancer is already advanced but we cannot detect them with the modality of the treatment and the modality of imaging that we have such as CT scan or PET scan and we can potentially find the areas of the cancer quicker and, obviously, giving chemotherapy to only the site of the cancer and not the normal cells. The reason for patients to come to City of Hope is because we are on cutting edge of medicine. We are like several other institutions across the country. We have knowledge about cancer; we have an expertise about how to tackle the cancer and we have a lot of new projects and new treatment strategies that we are aiming for cure. So, I encourage patients to seek medical attention at academic institution and with this level of knowledge and City of Hope is one of them across the country. I believe if patients live in South California, they would benefit by exploring this option.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Fekrazad. It's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating information. You’re listening to City of Hope Radio. For more information, you can go to cityofhope.org. That's cityofhope.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.