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Quirks and Quarks

Nature's drug delivery service

Nature provides a solution that technology can't
CBC Radio ·
Scientists at Montreal Polytechnique and McGill University report that they have developed a way to direct bacteria carrying loads of chemotherapy drugs directly into a tumour in mice, as shown in this illustration. (Nanorobotics Laboratory/Polytechnique Montreal)
Quirks and Quarks8:39Nature's Drug Delivery Service - 2016/09/24 - Pt. 3

The treatment for most cancers involves harsh and often debilitating chemotherapy treatment. The drugs are administered in large doses, with the goal of killing the cancerous cells. But they affect healthy tissue as well, and generally make patients feel terrible.

For the past 15 years, Dr. Sylvain Martel has been working on this problem in mice, trying to find a way of delivering chemotherapy drugs to the precise spot where they're needed: to the tumours themselves, so that the side-effects of the drugs might be limited.

As a nanorobotics researcher, he tried first to find a technological solution to the problem. But he discovered the challenge was too complex for the technology. However, it turns out that nature has what it takes  -- he found the perfect bacteria to do the job.

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