New method of magnet-based cancer drug delivery trialled

Scientists at Polytechnique Montreal have successfully completed the world's first delivery of an anti-cancer drug using magnetically-controlled microcarriers.

The Canadian team, led by Professor Sylvain Martel, was able to use a magnetic resonance imaging system to guide the microscopic drug delivery agents through the bloodstream of a living rabbit to a targeted area in the liver.

Once in place, the 50 micrometre-wide polymer carriers were able to progressively release the doxorubicin encapsulated within into the affected organ.

This builds on the previous achievement of Professor Martel, director of the nanorobotics laboratory at Polytechnique Montreal, in becoming the first researcher to guide a magnetic sphere through a living artery.

It is hoped that this method can be used to precisely target cancerous cells without the associated risk of affecting the healthy tissue around them.

This comes after Brown University scientists announced in January 2011 that they have devised magnetised pills that can be remotely moved and held in the most absorbent parts of the intestines.