An article this morning in R&D Magazine online revealed that researchers have developed a technique to coat anticancer drugs in membranes made from blood platelets of the patient. Doing so allows drugs to last longer in the body and attack both primary cancer tumors as well as cells that may be circulating tumors that can cause cancer to metastasize (spread to the other parts of the body). The research was successfully tested in an animal model.

There are 2 key factors that make this important for cancer research.
One is that cancer cell surfaces have an affinity for platelets. They will “stick to” each other. Second, the patient’s own platelets are used which means the drug carriers are not identified as foreign objects in the body, and can last for up to 30 hours in the bloodstream compared to up to 6 hours for carriers with out the coating.

The researchers in North Carolina hope to get more pre-clinical testing. Quanyin Hu is lead author of the paper and a PhD student in the joint biomedical engineering program at Chapel Hill and N. Carolina State U.