While nanoparticles are sometimes decried, especially when they are used in sunscreens, their use in medicine is closely studied by many researchers around the world. The nanomedicine uses the properties of the infinitely small, deciphers Jean-Luc Coll, president of the French society of nanomedicine.
“Nanoparticles range from one to a few hundred nanometers. The most important thing to understand is that it is an assembly of several molecules with several functions”, he explains.
With nanomedicine, “we manufacture structures that resemble viruses in size. When we put molecules together in a nanoparticle, this generates new and multiple functions, that’s the interest of the nano-object”, exhibits Jean-Luc Coll.
These nanoparticles, a large part of the world’s population has already been confronted with since messenger RNA vaccines once morest Covid-19 use them: it is then a question of transporting the RNA in lipid nanoparticles, which will protect it once in the body to deliver it to the right place.
This is just one of many possible applications in nanomedicine.
Nanoparticles can be used to transport a drug to its target, or make it possible to use an active ingredient that might not be administered until now. With potential use in various fields, in diagnostics, in regenerative medicine, and in particular in oncology.
In the inner suburbs of Paris, in Villejuif, the biotech Nanobiotix is developing a product which, it hopes, will help fight cancer thanks to a nanoparticle of hafnium, a metal with a high capacity for absorbing radiation.
In his laboratory, Nanobiotix creates a formulation that will then be injected into patients undergoing radiotherapy.
Hope in the treatment of cancers by radiotherapy
“Radiotherapy creates damage upstream and downstream of the tumor, which limits its use at high doses”, explains Laurent Levy, the founder of this biotech.
To work around the problem, “we will locally introduce very small objects that go inside the cancer cell, where they will absorb the energy of the radiotherapy. This product will increase efficiency without increasing toxicity outside the tumor” , he adds.
In addition to this local action, Nanobiotix, founded in 2003, is also studying systemic action. “In addition to physically destroying the tumor, we highlight the different parts of it, which become recognizable by the immune system”, emphasizes Laurent Levy. And this, even though cancer cells, traditionally, are not recognized by it.
Nanobiotix, listed in Paris and New York, has started a clinical trial to study this immune action, while several other trials are underway, at a more advanced stage, for head and neck cancers in particular.
The field is promising, and another French company, NH TherAguix, is developing a nanomedicine to improve the treatment of tumors by radiotherapy.
The principle, on paper, would seem almost simple. In reality, years of research are needed for the process to be stabilized.
“Nanomedicine is rich in applications, but it is delayed by the nature of the objects manipulated, and the difficulty of obtaining a product whose composition is guaranteed for each batch”, analysis Jean-Luc Coll.
This should not deter research, wishes Laurent Levy. “France must take bets, otherwise we will never be the first in the field of biotech or pharma”, he pleads.
“We are in the middle of the ford”, believes Jean-Luc Coll, who regrets a lack of funding in nanomedicine. Nevertheless, messenger RNA vaccines and their nanolipid envelopes have given “Magic lighting. This is the example that was needed”.
With AFP
