Israel develops self-assembly multi-drug nanoparticles for cancer treatment: study

JERUSALEM, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Israeli researchers have developed a cancer treatment using multi-drug nanoparticles by applying biological, chemical, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the Israel Institute of Technology said in a statement on Tuesday.

Their study, published in the Journal of Controlled Release, is based on treatments that combine several cancer drugs. Such combinations create an effect that exceeds the cumulative benefit of the drugs.

The novelty in the new treatment is that the drug combinations achieve not only the desired biological therapy effect but also self-assembly chemical processes.

This means that the multi-drug nanoparticles developed by the team show biological and chemical synergism at the same time.

The "meta-synergistic" drug combinations were found effective in preclinical testing, with fewer side effects compared to effects caused by each drug separately.

To predict the self-assembly outcome and therapeutic effectiveness of the drug combinations, the researchers developed a machine-learning model.

Then, they used literature text mining to capture drug pairs with biological synergy together with synergistic chemical self-assembly and generated a database with 1,985 drug pairs, or "recipes" for 70 cancer types.

Out of these drug pairs, the team found, in both computational results and animal experiments, that the combination of anti-cancer drugs -- bortezomib for blood cancers and cabozantinib for liver, kidney, and thyroid cancers -- exhibits chemical stability, high efficacy, efficient distribution and low toxicity in the body.