Longevity science

One of the more promising developments in the field of medical technology involves the use of microspheres for targeted drug delivery. In a nutshell, this encompasses creating tiny hollow balls that are filled with a specific drug, which travel directly to a specific organ or area of diseased tissue. Once there, the spheres release their medication, keeping it concentrated where it’s needed while sparing other tissue from any harmful side effects.

Recently, a team of scientists from Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces devised a new method of manufacturing such microspheres, which is said to offer several advantages over existing techniques.

A team of scientists from the UCSF School of Pharmacy, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) and SeaChange Pharmaceuticals has developed a set of computer models that can predict negative side effects associated with existing drugs. By speeding up the process and increasing accuracy, the software could potentially save billions in research and decrease the number of animals used in toxicity tests.

The model, based on UCSF’s “similarity ensemble approach” (SEA), uses the similarities between the shape of each drug and thousands of other compounds to predict possible side effects. The theory behind SEA technology is that proteins can be related by their pharmacology, and these network relationships can be explored to discover new targets for established drugs.

Note that this is not fully successful yet, but an interesting prototype:

What if treating skin cancer was just a matter of wearing a patch for a few hours? At this year’s Society of Nuclear Medicine’s Annual Meeting one group of researchers presented such a patch.

The patch is infused with phosphorus-32, a radioactive isotope used to treat some types of cancer. In a study of 10 patients with basal cell carcinoma located on their faces, the patch was applied for three hours, then for another three hours four and seven days later. When biopsies were taken three months after treatment all ten patients, ranging from 32 to 74 years old, showed no traces of their tumors.

**When biopsies were performed again at six months, however, the basal cell carcinomas had returned in two of the patients.