‘Superbowl’ kicks off drug delivery revolution
Scientists from The Australian National University have developed a ‘Superbowl’ drug delivery system that promises more accurate doses of drugs with fewer side effects.
The researchers have created a molecule – dubbed the ‘Superbowl’ – which can capture, hold and deliver drugs.
Associate Professor Michael Sherburn said that unlike conventional capsules, the rate at which a drug is released from the superbowl container molecule can be controlled and this has the potential to allow lower drug doses, hence leading to fewer side-effects.
The group have already successfully put aspirin inside the superbowl and are now working on incorporating drugs to treat other diseases, including cancers, arthritis and heart disease.
“We have shown that drug release can be controlled at the most precise level, which is very encouraging for the future of drug delivery,” said Associate Professor Sherburn.
Correct radiotherapy would do more than new drugs
Lead researcher Professor Lester Peters from the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, told ABC radio’s AM that the difference in survival between patients was 70% survival for patients who got good radiotherapy and only 50% in those who got unsatisfactory radiotherapy.
Cancer treatment centres that treated lots of head and neck cancer patients had a low probability of giving sub-standard radiotherapy whereas those that treated only a few were the main sources of problems with unsatisfactory treatment.
Porfessor Peters said the logical extrapolation of our results in the context of Australia is that as more and more regional cancer centres are opened up there are certain types of complex cancers that are probably still best treated in the major facilities.
The difficulty is to reconcile the convenience of treatment in the regions with the impossibility of maintaining sub-specialty expertise in every small facility.
