Nanosensor promises rapid drug screen
15 Dec 2014
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have engineered a nanoparticle-based sensor system that can be used to rapidly screen cancer drugs.
The multi-channel sensor consists of gold nanoparticles designed to accurately profile various anti-cancer drugs and their mechanisms within a matter of minutes.
To discover any new drug to treat any disease, researchers must first screen billions of compounds - a process which can often take months, lead researcher Vincent Rotello said.
“The sensor is not only able to profile mechanisms for individual drugs but also determine the mechanisms of drug mixtures
Lead researcher Le Ngoc
Rotello and his fellow lead author Le Ngoc said that one of the vital components of successfully bringing a drug to market is identifying how its chemical mechanism works.
“Rapid determination of drug mechanism would greatly streamline the drug discovery process, opening the pipeline of new therapeutics,” Ngoc said.
“Drugs with different mechanisms cause changes in the surface of cells that can be read out using the new sensor system. We found that each drug mechanism generated a unique pattern, and we used these cell surface differences to quickly profile different drug mechanisms.”
To expedite drug screening, the researchers developed a signature-based approach using a gold nanoparticle sensor system and three differently labelled proteins by colour: blue, green and red.
Using an engineered nanoparticle and three fluorescent proteins provides “a three-channel sensor that can be trained to detect subtle changes in cell surface properties”, the researchers said.
According to researchers, the nanosensor is generalisable to different cell types and does not require processing steps before analysis.
It offers a simple, effective way to speed-up research in drug discovery, toxicology and cell-based sensing, the researchers said.
“The sensor is not only able to profile mechanisms for individual drugs but also determine the mechanisms of drug mixtures, that is, drug ’cocktails’ that are an emerging tool with many therapies,” Ngoc said.
A full account of the study has been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
