hair loss nausea vomiting reduced immune
response fatigue these could all be
symptoms of a severe disease but in fact
they are side effects of a very common
treatment at least a third of us living
on Earth today will develop cancer
during life in many cases our best
weapon against the disease is
chemotherapy where a drug is injected
into the patient’s bloodstream in order
to kill the rapidly dividing cells the
big problem is that the drug spreads to
the entire body and damages our healthy
cells this is what causes all the nasty
side effects that I just mentioned
sometimes they become so bad that the
treatment is stopped and this brings us
to the next challenge when all the cells
in our body share the chemotherapy only
a small portion as little as 0.01
percent of the dose actually reaches the
tumor that’s only one part in 10,000 so
if this is the amount of drug the
patient would get only this little
reaches the right place so as a team of
cancer researchers we want to deliver
more drug to the tumor and less to the
rest of the body
that way we can reduce the dose reduce
the side effects but still have a good
effect of the treatment so how can we do
this one option is to encapsulate the
drug into tiny carriers which we call
nanoparticles Anana particle is so tiny
that you could fit a thousand of them in
the width of a human hair but they are
still large enough to carry a load of
drug now I will tell you a story about
our nanoparticles in their journey of
reaching and beating the cancer cells
first we inject the nanoparticles into
the bloodstream in contrast to the small
chemotherapeutic drug the nanoparticles
are too large to escape from the blood
vessels in most of our healthy tissues
in the tumor however the blood vessels
have porous walls almost like a sponge
that amount of particles can escape this
way we have a targeted carrier that
transports the drug to the diseased
cells the nanoparticle acts just like a
truck with a GPS carrying a large
payload to the correct address this way
we can deliver about a hundred times
more drug to the tumor so far so good
but we have another challenge these
nanoparticles only reach the cancer
cells they’re our closest to the blood
vessel the cells that are far away are
not affected but in order to have an
effective treatment it is really
important that the drug reaches all the
cancer cells so these nanoparticles need
our help to reach all the way luckily we
have a strategy which could make the
particles even more effective these
nanoparticles are really special because
they can form tiny micro bubbles here is
a model of our micro bubbles and this is
what they look like in real life a
spherical shell of tiny tiny nano
particles with gas inside now we can
inject the micro bubbles into the
bloodstream and then we applied
ultrasound waves to the tumor the
ultrasound waves will make the micro
bubbles oscillate and eventually burst
so that amount of particles are released
and these vibrations from the bubbles
will massage the blood vessels and the
tissue around them and cause even more
pores and this way we create a local
force that can push the nano particles
out from the blood vessels and deeper
into the tissue I have used an advanced
microscope to image this in tumors in
mice you see the nanoparticles in green
and the blood vessels in red in tumors
that were not treated for the ultrasound
we see that there are many areas left
without nanoparticles but by applying
the right type of ultrasound waves we
see that many more Inanna particles are
delivered this way we can deliver about
250 times more of the dose to the tumor
compared to injection of only the drug
by itself that means that we can now
give the patient this much drug and have
the same effect as this previa
Stowe’s for the patient
this could mean less side-effects
improved quality of life and prolonged
survival we have now followed the
bubbles on their journey through the
blood vessels until they reach the tumor
we have seen that the nanoparticles are
delivered into the tissue and that the
ultrasound waves help them to reach the
cancer cells far away the next step is
to get the drug all the way to the
target and for the drug to work we have
to deliver it into each and every cancer
cell to study this process we grow
cancer cells in the laboratory and look
at them with a microscope what we see is
that Anana particles are protecting and
camouflaging the drug and that the
cancer cells happily eat our
nanoparticles so this is good news but
the drug is still encapsulated in order
to have an effective treatment the
nanoparticles now have to release the
drug exactly when and where it’s needed
because we can tailor the composition of
the nanoparticles we can decide how fast
they should degrade so after they have
been eaten they will eventually dissolve
so that the drug is released inside the
cells then the cancer cells will finally
stop dividing and eventually shrink and
die finally the nanoparticles have been
beaten the cancer cells so this is very
exciting technology and we’ve shown some
promising results so far based on these
results we performed a small treatment
study as a proof of principle we’ve
treated mice with breast tumors two
weeks in a row and measured the tumor
growth for several months afterwards
tumors that did not receive any
treatment
grew continuously when we gave the
animals microbubbles we saw that the
tumor growth could be reduced for some
time when we treated with tumors with
ultrasound in addition to micro bubbles
we saw that the tumors shrunk and
disappeared and that the animals were
actually cured so this is really great
we still have many years of research
ahead and a lot of things to investigate
but our aim is the ultrasound income
with microbubbles will one day be used
in a clinic to make already existing
drugs more effective so we are working
really hard to get there and we are now
doing three different things to get
closer the first is that were testing
this technology for different types of
cancer in mice to determine which types
of tumors respond to such treatments
this information can in the future be
used to select only the patients that
will respond well the second is that
we’re imaging the details of what is
actually happening to the bubbles inside
the blood vessels this reveals new
knowledge Trust which allows us to
optimize the technology the third is
that we’re working with different types
of micro bubbles with other properties
to really learn more about what works
best
these bubbles can be injected together
with drugs or nanoparticles and some of
them are about to be tested in clinical
trials in patients to arrive soon so a
technology like this has great potential
with the nanoparticles we cannot only
deliver one drug at a time we can
encapsulate combinations of drugs which
we know will work well together
in addition ultrasound and microbubbles
can be used for different types of
tumors because we can apply the
ultrasound locally exactly where we want
to treat and that also opens up for
another really fascinating application
namely brain treatment the brain is well
protected from all substances in the
blood and only allows specific molecules
to enter which our brain cells need this
is what’s called a blood-brain barrier
and because of this barrier it is really
hard to deliver drugs to the brain and
for many diseases there is still no
available treatment but there is still
hope with the use of ultrasound and our
bubbles we have seen that we can open up
this barrier temporarily and deliver
nanoparticles to the brain in this image
you see a rat brain with a green spot
exactly where we treated with ultrasound
that means that we can deliver drugs to
the brain cells this could make a big
impact for treatment of brain
answer but we think that this in the
future also could enable a gentle
delivery of drugs to other serious brain
diseases such as Parkinson’s or
Alzheimer’s so sometimes the smallest
ideas can make the biggest changes thank
you [Applause]
response fatigue these could all be
symptoms of a severe disease but in fact
they are side effects of a very common
treatment at least a third of us living
on Earth today will develop cancer
during life in many cases our best
weapon against the disease is
chemotherapy where a drug is injected
into the patient’s bloodstream in order
to kill the rapidly dividing cells the
big problem is that the drug spreads to
the entire body and damages our healthy
cells this is what causes all the nasty
side effects that I just mentioned
sometimes they become so bad that the
treatment is stopped and this brings us
to the next challenge when all the cells
in our body share the chemotherapy only
a small portion as little as 0.01
percent of the dose actually reaches the
tumor that’s only one part in 10,000 so
if this is the amount of drug the
patient would get only this little
reaches the right place so as a team of
cancer researchers we want to deliver
more drug to the tumor and less to the
rest of the body
that way we can reduce the dose reduce
the side effects but still have a good
effect of the treatment so how can we do
this one option is to encapsulate the
drug into tiny carriers which we call
nanoparticles Anana particle is so tiny
that you could fit a thousand of them in
the width of a human hair but they are
still large enough to carry a load of
drug now I will tell you a story about
our nanoparticles in their journey of
reaching and beating the cancer cells
first we inject the nanoparticles into
the bloodstream in contrast to the small
chemotherapeutic drug the nanoparticles
are too large to escape from the blood
vessels in most of our healthy tissues
in the tumor however the blood vessels
have porous walls almost like a sponge
that amount of particles can escape this
way we have a targeted carrier that
transports the drug to the diseased
cells the nanoparticle acts just like a
truck with a GPS carrying a large
payload to the correct address this way
we can deliver about a hundred times
more drug to the tumor so far so good
but we have another challenge these
nanoparticles only reach the cancer
cells they’re our closest to the blood
vessel the cells that are far away are
not affected but in order to have an
effective treatment it is really
important that the drug reaches all the
cancer cells so these nanoparticles need
our help to reach all the way luckily we
have a strategy which could make the
particles even more effective these
nanoparticles are really special because
they can form tiny micro bubbles here is
a model of our micro bubbles and this is
what they look like in real life a
spherical shell of tiny tiny nano
particles with gas inside now we can
inject the micro bubbles into the
bloodstream and then we applied
ultrasound waves to the tumor the
ultrasound waves will make the micro
bubbles oscillate and eventually burst
so that amount of particles are released
and these vibrations from the bubbles
will massage the blood vessels and the
tissue around them and cause even more
pores and this way we create a local
force that can push the nano particles
out from the blood vessels and deeper
into the tissue I have used an advanced
microscope to image this in tumors in
mice you see the nanoparticles in green
and the blood vessels in red in tumors
that were not treated for the ultrasound
we see that there are many areas left
without nanoparticles but by applying
the right type of ultrasound waves we
see that many more Inanna particles are
delivered this way we can deliver about
250 times more of the dose to the tumor
compared to injection of only the drug
by itself that means that we can now
give the patient this much drug and have
the same effect as this previa
Stowe’s for the patient
this could mean less side-effects
improved quality of life and prolonged
survival we have now followed the
bubbles on their journey through the
blood vessels until they reach the tumor
we have seen that the nanoparticles are
delivered into the tissue and that the
ultrasound waves help them to reach the
cancer cells far away the next step is
to get the drug all the way to the
target and for the drug to work we have
to deliver it into each and every cancer
cell to study this process we grow
cancer cells in the laboratory and look
at them with a microscope what we see is
that Anana particles are protecting and
camouflaging the drug and that the
cancer cells happily eat our
nanoparticles so this is good news but
the drug is still encapsulated in order
to have an effective treatment the
nanoparticles now have to release the
drug exactly when and where it’s needed
because we can tailor the composition of
the nanoparticles we can decide how fast
they should degrade so after they have
been eaten they will eventually dissolve
so that the drug is released inside the
cells then the cancer cells will finally
stop dividing and eventually shrink and
die finally the nanoparticles have been
beaten the cancer cells so this is very
exciting technology and we’ve shown some
promising results so far based on these
results we performed a small treatment
study as a proof of principle we’ve
treated mice with breast tumors two
weeks in a row and measured the tumor
growth for several months afterwards
tumors that did not receive any
treatment
grew continuously when we gave the
animals microbubbles we saw that the
tumor growth could be reduced for some
time when we treated with tumors with
ultrasound in addition to micro bubbles
we saw that the tumors shrunk and
disappeared and that the animals were
actually cured so this is really great
we still have many years of research
ahead and a lot of things to investigate
but our aim is the ultrasound income
with microbubbles will one day be used
in a clinic to make already existing
drugs more effective so we are working
really hard to get there and we are now
doing three different things to get
closer the first is that were testing
this technology for different types of
cancer in mice to determine which types
of tumors respond to such treatments
this information can in the future be
used to select only the patients that
will respond well the second is that
we’re imaging the details of what is
actually happening to the bubbles inside
the blood vessels this reveals new
knowledge Trust which allows us to
optimize the technology the third is
that we’re working with different types
of micro bubbles with other properties
to really learn more about what works
best
these bubbles can be injected together
with drugs or nanoparticles and some of
them are about to be tested in clinical
trials in patients to arrive soon so a
technology like this has great potential
with the nanoparticles we cannot only
deliver one drug at a time we can
encapsulate combinations of drugs which
we know will work well together
in addition ultrasound and microbubbles
can be used for different types of
tumors because we can apply the
ultrasound locally exactly where we want
to treat and that also opens up for
another really fascinating application
namely brain treatment the brain is well
protected from all substances in the
blood and only allows specific molecules
to enter which our brain cells need this
is what’s called a blood-brain barrier
and because of this barrier it is really
hard to deliver drugs to the brain and
for many diseases there is still no
available treatment but there is still
hope with the use of ultrasound and our
bubbles we have seen that we can open up
this barrier temporarily and deliver
nanoparticles to the brain in this image
you see a rat brain with a green spot
exactly where we treated with ultrasound
that means that we can deliver drugs to
the brain cells this could make a big
impact for treatment of brain
answer but we think that this in the
future also could enable a gentle
delivery of drugs to other serious brain
diseases such as Parkinson’s or
Alzheimer’s so sometimes the smallest
ideas can make the biggest changes thank
you [Applause]
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