Drugs and other treatments can be quite effective at killing cancer cells, yet many fall short as they struggle to penetrate deep into solid tumors due to physical barriers within the tissue. But in a recent study described in ACS Nano, researchers may have found a way to pull them through.
A team of bioengineers at the University of Pennsylvania transported therapeutic nanoparticles, featuring magnetic cores, into the depths of tumors by tugging at them with an external magnetic device. Working in a mouse model of triple-negative breast cancer, the researchers used their approach to slow tumor growth far more than treatment with nanoparticles not exposed to a magnetic field.