Professor Lee Dong-yun from the Department of Bioengineering at Hanyang University developed an oral treatment for brain tumors using milk protein-shelled gold nanoparticles. This new oral therapy is easy to take and is expected to be used in various anti-cancer treatment research fields.

Delivering drugs to tumors in the brain is more challenging than in other organs. The development of oral treatments for brain tumors has produced little results due to difficulties in drug absorption in the small intestine and in penetrating the blood-brain barrier. For this reason, radiotherapy and orally administrable temozolomide have been used as standard treatments.

Professor Lee's team focused on the high absorption of lactoferrin protein present in large quantities in colostrum in the small intestine, which increased the low oral absorption rate of nanomedicines and the delivery to brain tumors. The researchers developed a platform technology that could bind lactoferrin with receptors on the surface of intestinal cells and brain tumor cells. 

Professor Lee's team coated gold nanoparticles with milk protein lactoferrin to promote absorption in the small intestine and transferred more than eight times gold nanoparticles to brain tumor lesions than in the absence of lactoferrin. Then, using the physicochemical properties of gold nanoparticles, they generated heat by applying light to the brain tumor area and treated the tumor.

The research is significant as it developed platform technology using lactoferrin and opened up the possibility of making various brain disease treatments, including brain tumor therapy. Professor Lee said, "We are one step closer to developing anti-cancer drugs based on this new oral therapy platform technology." Professor Lee's team is currently developing a technology that uses light to carry out photodynamic therapy based on this platform.

The research was conducted with the support of ICT & Future Planning by the National Research Foundation of the Ministry of Science and ICT. The results were published in the online edition of Bioactive Materials (IF=14.593), a world-renowned journal in the field of Biomaterials, on June 28, 2021.

Kim Hyung-shik, a Ph.D. student in Hanyang University's Department of Biotechnology, participated as the first author and Professor Lee Dong-yun as a corresponding author for the paper (Titled: Milk protein-shelled gold nanoparticles with gastrointestinally active absorption for aurotherapy to a brain tumor).