UAB researchers create 'nanopills' which release drugs from the cell interior
13/03/2012
The research team led by Antoni Vallverde from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB) at UAB worked in collaboration with the Online Biomedical Research Centre for Bioengineering, Biomaterials, and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN) to create a new vehicle to release proteins with therapeutic effects. The vehicles are known as "bacteria inclusion bodies", stable insoluble nanoparticles which normally are found in recombinant bacteria. Even though these inclusion bodies traditionally have been an obstacle in the industrial production of soluble enzymes and biodrugs, they were recently recognised to have large amounts of functional proteins with direct values in industrial and biomedical applications.
The research team demonstrated the value of these nanoparticles as natural "nanopills" with a strong capacity to penetrate cells and carry out biological activities. In the multidisciplinary study conducted at UAB and led by Dr Esther Vàzquez, researchers packaged four proteins containing different therapeutic effects into experimental nanopills, the inclusion bodies of the bacteria Escherichia coli. They put the bacteria in contact with cell cultures of mammals under similar conditions to those found in real clinical pathologies, "sick" cells with low viability, and achieved to recover their activity.
Once the technology was licensed to Janus Developments - which currently invests in the development of the product - the tolerance of its administration in vivo was confirmed through experiments conducted by UAB researcher Ester Fernández. The results and detailed description of the ?nanopill? were published this week in the journal Advanced Materials.
The multidisciplinary study included researchers from IBB, the UAB Departments of Genetics and Microbiology and of Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology, the CIBER-BBN, the CIBER-EHD (Online Biomedical Research Centre for Hepatic and Digestive Diseases), the firm Janus Developments, the Leibniz University of Hannover and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany.