Despite an increase in new chemotherapies, the overall prognosis for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) remains extremely poor, with just 5% of patients surviving for more than five years. This aggressive form of brain cancer is highly resistant to treatment, prompting researchers to explore new treatment avenues. Riluzole, a drug that has already been approved by the FDA to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is currently being explored as a treatment for several cancers including GBM. However, there is a need for novel drug delivery methods to enhance riluzole’s effectiveness and overcome barriers to targeted therapy, including minimizing harmful side effects in healthy cells, and maintaining the drug’s anti-cancer efficacy until it reaches tumor cells.
In this study, which was led by Tanja Dučić, scientist in the MIRAS beamline team at the ALBA Synchrotron, and published in ACS Omega, researchers engineered carbon-based nanoparticles, or carbon dots, made of 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid (AMPS). This organic delivery system (AMPS-CDs NPs) showed biocompatibility with glioblastoma cells, and researchers were keen to test its potential to act as a nanocarrier for the drug riluzole.
Several Spanish institutions and researchers collaborated in this project, including Manuel Algarra from INAMAT2 (Institute for Advanced Materials and Mathematics), at the Public University of Navarra; Elena Gonzalez-Munoz, Maria Soledad Pino-González and Juan Soto from the University of Malaga; Pablo Guerra from the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC); and Tanja Dučić from ALBA.
The study demonstrates the successful complementarity between synchrotron light and electron microscopy. By combining the MIRAS beamline and the Cryo-TEM at IBMB-CSIC, part of the Joint Electron Microscopy Center at ALBA (JEMCA), the collaboration achieved its first publication using both instruments. Pablo Guerra, coordinator of the Cryo-TEM, performed the microscope data acquisition. “Using the Cryo-TEM we confirmed the nanoparticles’ shape and size, with a diameter of 4.5-5 nm, which was impossible to observe with other methods”, says Tanja Dučić.
The nanoparticles were extensively characterized to determine their exact surface composition using techniques that included XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy, as well as cryo-transmission electron microscopy. The synthesized nanoparticles are covered in sulfonated, carboxylic, and substituted amide groups. These functional groups make the AMPS-CDs potentially suitable nanocarriers for riluzole.
Read more on ALBA website
Image: Researchers Tanja Dučić from ALBA and Pablo Guerra from IBMB-CSIC at the control room of the EM01-Cryo-TEM of the Joint Electron Microscopy Center at ALBA
Credit: JEMCA