10-9 meters: the nanoscale. This enormous number’s importance lies in the small scale it defines and its use in fighting cancer. Well, how small is the nanoscale? Looking at the straightforward measurements, one meter is equal to 1 billion nanometers. This is a bit hard to visualize, so, for example, if you were to take one strand of your hair and then cut it into one hundred thousand equal pieces, each slice would be about one nanometer wide. The point is, the nanoscale is incomprehensibly small. Yet its applications are being used to combat a massive challenge. 

Ovarian cancer is a global killer in women. Despite an immense amount of research, time, and money put into fighting it, it remains a difficult challenge. It is usually diagnosed when it is too late, and subsequently, too advanced. The tumors are more likely to stick around or recur even after treatment. 

A common form of treatment for cancer is immunotherapy, which activates the body’s system to try to fight the cancer, and it does work for a handful of cancers. The traditional treatment affects the entire body, which unfortunately causes damage to healthy cells and can lead to exhausting side effects. Researchers have found that this process is not that effective on ovarian tumors. So, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have taken the nanoworld into consideration.

Nanoparticles are engineered particles that are only a few nanometers wide. They have been designed, in this case, to help deliver drugs and stimulants to specific parts of the immune system. At MIT, they have developed nanoparticles that can drop off a molecule called interleukin-12, or IL-12, directly to the ovarian tumors. This boosts the body’s ability to fight the cancer internally.

However, if too much IL-12 is released, it creates toxicity in the body and can even lead to death in severe cases. So, the nanoscale side of this process is beneficial in the way that it can only put IL-12 where tumors exist, not in the whole body. To tell the particles where to go, like where the ovaries are, the researchers coat the particles with a polymer layer before sending them off into the bloodstream. Once there, they bind to the cancer cell surface and start to release their IL-12 and activate the nearby T-cells. T-cells are fondly called “helper” and “killer” cells as they are an integral part of the immune system. They are the little soldiers, white-blood cells, that attack the unhealthy cells, such as cancer cells.

Most cancer cells are difficult to combat since they release their own proteins that can suppress the human body’s immune response. The aforementioned T-cells can’t always do their part because they are often barricaded from the tumor cells. To counter this, checkpoint inhibitors, which are inhibitors that help the immune system recognize harmful cells, were designed to remove those immunosuppressants so that the T-cells could get back to work. Unfortunately, ovarian tumors have many ways to block T-cells, so checkpoint inhibitors are not enough.

In their first mouse study, the MIT lab used the IL-12 process and found that about 30 percent of the mice were cured. They also found a large increase in the number of T-cells that were in the surrounding area. At this point, they knew that they had found a way to charge up the T-cells and start their attack, but there was still so much blockage. So, in their next trial, they introduced the checkpoint inhibitors along with the particles. More than 80 percent of the mice had their tumors eradicated.

After about five months, the researchers reinjected tumor cells into the cured mice’s ovaries. They found that their little immune systems were able to recognize the cells and kill them. This is called an immune memory. 

If this treatment process continues to have major breakthroughs and can progress through the necessary requirements of medicinal practice, it can become applicable in more tumor treatments. For the nanoscale, more research is being done every day, for cancer, for sustainability, and for clean energy. There are even studies being conducted on the early detection of cancer using nanosensors.

The new precision of attacks on tumors is exciting for researchers and physicians worldwide. Immunotherapy, radiation, and large doses of IL-12 can have tiring and painful side effects on people and their loved ones. This potential treatment is a renewed sense of hope and passion.