Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers that threaten women's health. According to latest statistics from National Cancer Center, the incidence of breast cancer is on rise these years and has higher morbidity among Chinese woman than any other kinds of cancer. Around 15% to 20% of breast cancer is Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), which is highly malignant and aggressive and can easily spread to lung, brain, bone and other parts of our body. There has been no effective treatment for metastatic TNBC and the prognosis is terrible.

On March 14, Nature Biotechnology published a paper online titled "An Injectable Nanoparticle Generator Enhances Delivery of Cancer Therapeutics". Xu Rong, an associate professor from School of Basic Medicine, is the first author.

In this research, Xu started from the angle of breaking biological barriers in human body and creatively designed a new nano-drug named iNPG-pDox. Compared with the traditional therapeutic Adriamycin, which can only penetrate one barrier--membranes, iNPG-pDox can penetrate many kinds of biological barriers and targets metastatic tumor of TNBC on lungs effectively due to the unique design. In the model of metastatic tumor of TNBC on mice's lungs, 50% of mice can live for a long time free of cancer after iNPG-pDox treatment. This therapeutic is better than traditional therapeutic in treatment effect and drug safety and is expected to get into clinic research and to benefit patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

The paper drew a lot of attention after published. Science published a report titled "Nano-balls Filled with Poison Wipe out Metastatic Cancer in Mice" in its "latest news" at the same day the paper was published. News media such as Daily Mail and EurekAlert also pay close attention to this research.

Details about the paper, please read:

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.3506.html