Ajou News

NEW Prof. Lee Beom-jin’s team discovers a mechanism for optimizing the efficiency of cancer therapies

  • 2020-06-16
  • 3597
May 20, 2020
 
 
 
 
A team of researchers led by Ajou’s Prof. Lee Beom-jin (College of Pharmacy) successfully identified a new mechanism for optimizing the efficacy of cancer cell therapies.
 
Their study, entitled “Importance of the fatty acid chain length on in vitro and in vivo anticancer activity of fattigation-platform albumin nanoparticles in human colorectal cancer xenograft mice model,” was published in The Journal of Controlled Release, a prestigious publication for pharmaceutical and pharmacological research.
 
Prof. Lee’s team sought to design fatty acid-conjugated albumin nanoparticles (ANPs) of different chain lengths so as to test and compare their anticancer activities in mice with overactive free-fatty acid receptors (FFARs) and HCT116 human colorectal cancer xenografted. 
 
ANPs conjugated with fatty acids of different chain lengths (C4 for butyric acid; C18 for stearic acid) exhibited physicochemical characteristics and anticancer activity different from those of self-assembled structures.
 
In particular, ANPs with long-chain fatty acids including doxorubicin, a known anticancer drug, activated interaction with FFARs in the HCT 116 human colorectal cancer xenograft mouse model, providing better anticancer activity and fewer side effects than either nanoparticles without fatty acids conjugated or ANPs with short-chain fatty acids.
 
Prof. Lee explained: “The uniqueness of our achievement lies in our fattigation platform technology, which conjugates fatty acids of diverse lengths with large molecules. We expect to apply this technology to experiments with fatty acids of varying lengths and accelerate the research on and development of new drug delivery systems, including diverse target cancer therapies and drugs with improved solubility.”
 
 
 
 
An illustration of how Prof. Lee’s team’s technique was applied to improve the efficacy of an anticancer drug in a mouse model