Killing Cancer in Arkansas with Nanomedicine

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (also in Little Rock) may be on the verge of making cancer less of a threat while reducing the cost of cancer treatment. Thanks in part to National Institutes of Health grants under President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, cancer treatments such as surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy could be replaced within ten years.

Names that may quickly jump into mind when thinking about Arkansas include, of course, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and Billy Bob Thornton. Names that may be destined to become a part of Arkansas history are Vladimir Zharov and Alex Biris. Dr. Zharov is director of the Phillips Classic Laser and Nanomedicine Laboratories of the Winthrop Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS. Dr. Biris is the chief scientist at UALR’s Nanotechnology Center.

The technology sounds simple enough: tag a cancer cell with a carbon nanotube and heat it with a laser to destroy it. Nanotechnology involves really small particles; a nanometer is 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. The process developed in Little Rock detects, tracks and destroys cancer cells in real time. Raman spectroscopy is the technology used to monitor the nanoparticles moving through the blood stream and attaching themselves to cancerous cells.

The process has already tested successfully with lab rats. Dr. Ekaterina Glanzha of UAMS assisted Biris and Zharov when they injected a rat’s tail with a single cancer cell tagged with a nanotube. Using the Raman spectroscopy they watched the cell move through the circulatory system to the ear. The targeted cell was then destroyed with a laser, and it completely disintegrated within hours.

Dr. Daniel Casciano, project adviser and former director of the Food & Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research south of Little Rock, said, "This represents a more exact, more precise and more cost-effective means of treating cancer. And there is a therapeutic benefit as well because we can target the cancer cells without killing or injuring normal cells." (continued below)

Several other Arkansas universities have participated in the research along with NCTR. They are the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, University of Central Arkansas at Conway, Arkansas State University at Jonesboro and Arkansas Tech University at Russellville. Early plans are underway for creation of an Arkansas nanomedical center in Little Rock to coordinate future work.

Because of the amount of information already available about breast and prostate cancer, these are the two cancers that will probably be targeted first with the new technology. Dr. Zharov said, however, that the door is now open for other applications such as treating stroke, heart attack, infections and neurological disorders.

Dr. Mary Good is dean of UALR’s Engineering and Information Technology and previously served the Clinton administration as technology undersecretary of commerce. She said, "The research Dr. Biris and Dr. Zharov have conducted indeed is significant and promising. It points to a whole new direction for medical applications for nanoparticles. There still is extensive time needed for research into the ultimate utility for these approaches and for human subject experiments. But this early work is exciting and provides long-term hope for more effective cancer treatments."

About the Scientists

Zharov obtained his Ph.D. and D.Sc. degrees at Moscow State Technical University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence National Laboratory of the University of California. He served as professor and chairman of the Biomedical Engineering Department at Moscow University.

Since 2000, he has been a professor and director of the Phillips Classic Laser and Nanomedicine Laboratories at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Zharov has authored and co-authored five books, 40 patents, and published close to 200 papers. He is the principle investigator in 12 grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Department of Defense. He has unique interdisciplinary skills in physics, biology and medicine.

Biris earned his Ph.D. at UALR and joined the faculty in 2006. He and his team have filed 11 patent applications in nanotechnology, bio-nanotechnology, space exploration, and materials science areas. He is fully involved in studying the interaction of nanomaterials with biological systems and using use such novel nanostructures for targeting and killing cancer cells. He has more than 160 papers published in peer reviewed journals or presented at international conferences.

He was part of the team that designed and developed a newly patented electrodynamic screen for space exploration in collaboration with NASA. Patent applications are pending on his new method and technology for producing large quantities of carbon nanotubes with high purity. He led the design and development of carbon nanostructures-based filters to efficiently remove bio-chemical contaminants from air and water.

In addition to his groundbreaking research and work with graduate and undergraguate students, Biris works one-on-one with gifted middle- and high school students in Arkansas.