Study: Nanotubes deliver anti-cancer drugs

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 9 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have developed carbon nanotubes as a "longboat delivery system" to aid in the development of platinum-based anticancer drugs.

The drugs include analogues of the widely used and extremely potent drugs cisplatin, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Stephen Lippard and Stanford University's Hongjie Dai and colleagues note efforts to produce such molecules have been hindered because the required form of platinum loses activity in the body, becoming ineffective before reaching the tumor. The researchers' solution was to develop a carbon nanotube delivery system for shuttling platinum compounds safely into the tumor.

Once inside the tumor cell, the compounds convert from an inactive form into an active anti-cancer drug.

The report is scheduled for release in the July 11 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.