Combinatorial nanotherapeutics: rewiring, then killing, cancer cells.
Tumors are inherently resilient and often develop resistance against cancer therapies, leading to poor patient outcomes. With the sophisticated analytical and computational tools now available, much has been revealed about how molecularly targeted drugs affect the biochemical networks of cancer cells, enabling the directed design of treatment regimens that can better thwart resistance. In this issue of Science Signaling, Morton et al. demonstrate a nanoparticle system capable of sequentially delivering two drugs: The first inhibits an oncogenic pathway to sensitize the cells to DNA damage-induced apoptosis; the second is a genotoxic drug that takes advantage of the vulnerable state of the cancer cells to kill them with enhanced efficiency.
Department of NanoEngineering and Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
Ronnie H
RH
Fang
Department of NanoEngineering and Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. zhang@ucsd.edu.
Liangfang
L
Zhang
D000818:Animals; D000971:Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols; D004337:Drug Carriers; D005260:Female; D053758:Nanoparticles; D009374:Neoplasms, Experimental / Q000188:drug therapy*
D004337:Drug Carriers