University of Washington researchers have discovered that by combining chlorotoxin - a small peptide isolated from the venom of scorpions - with nanoparticles, they were able to cut the spread of cancerous cells by 98 percent.

Chlorotoxin has been used for the last ten years as a cancer treatment for its ability to slow cancerous cell invasion. The venom toxin binds to a surface protein (MMP-2) on the cancer cell's surface. Researchers believe that MMP-2 helps the cancer cell break through the protective cellular matrix to spread to new regions of the body. When chlorotoxin binds at the MMP-2 site, the activity is blocked, and both the MMP-2 protein and the chlorotoxin get absorbed back into the cancer cell - slowing the cancers ability to spread down to a crawl.

Miqin Zhang, professor of materials science and engineering at UW is the lead author on the study, recently published in the journal Small.

To date, most cancer research has combined nanoparticles either with chemotherapy that kills cancer cells, or a therapy that seeks to disrupt the genetic activity of a cancerous cell. This marks the first time that nanoparticles have been combined with a therapy that physically stops cancer's spread.

Slowing the spread of cancer would be especially useful for treating highly invasive tumors such as brain cancer. MMP-2 also shows signs of being overactive in cancers of the breast, colon, skin, lung, prostate and ovaries - so the researchers are optimistic that the technique could be effective in slowing the spread of these other tumors as well.

Read more from the official release: http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=48796