A research team funded by the National Science Council (NSC) said it has developed a new method using nanotechnology to deliver drugs directly to the cancer cells — like a missile being guided to a target — while reducing side effects to a minimum.
National Science Council Deputy Director-General Hocheng Hong (賀陳弘) told a press conference yesterday in Taipei that while chemotherapy often causes side effects because the drugs used can damage healthy cells as well and targeted therapy is too expensive for many patients, the team’s new method could provide a new option.
The team, led by Chen San-yuan (陳三元), a professor in National Chiao Tung University’s materials science and engineering department, developed a drug carrier with iron oxide nanoparticles that can encapulsate more than one type of drug — such as Adriamycin and Paclitaxel —reducing the harm caused by the toxic drugs to other parts of the body as they are delivered through the veins.
An iron oxide nanoparticle carrier is small enough to travel through the veins to enter the area where cancer cells are rapidly growing, and since it is magnetic it can be guided to the targeted cancer cells using a magnet, Chen said.
The new method can solve one of the traditional problems with chemotherapy, which is that only about 10 percent of the drugs actually reach the targeted cells.
The “Nano-MagCapsule” acts like a rocket that releases objects in different stages, Chen said.
It can release the one type of drug when it first reaches the tumor tissue, and release a second type of drug later to fight the more difficult-to-reach cells in deeper parts of the tissue, such as the cancer stem cells and tumor hypoxia, he said.
Animal experiments have shown the method to be very effective. It can also reduce the amount of drugs needed to about one-fifth of the usual chemotherapy doses, he said.
Experiments are underway to test the method on breast cancer, brain tumors and lung cancer, he said.
As the drugs used in the trials have already been certified by the government, the team’s method is likely to be approved for clinical trial and usage rather than in the development of totally new drugs, Chen said.
The method has already been patented and the technology transferred to a Taiwanese biotechnology company, the council said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,