Arsenic trioxide along with lipid based nanoparticles could help in treating acute promyelocytic leukemia. This has been discovered by researchers at Northwestern University. Thomas O’Halloran and his team is not the only one which is making an effort to encapsulate arsenic trioxide into lipid based nanoparticles but this for the first time that a method has been developed for loading big amounts of anticancer drug into nanoparticles and tap the drug within the nanoparticle till it is released inside tumors.
The team developed a stable nanoparticle formulation by loading the nanoparticles with metal salts such as cobalt acetate, nickel acetate or zinc acetate and then adding arsenic trioxide to it. When arsenic trioxide crossed into nanoparticle it formed an insoluble complex with metal ions which were there and this process lead to the production of acetic acid which diffused out of nanoparticle.
When the molecule left the nanoparticle it led more arsenic trioxide into the nanoparticle which increased the amount of active drug encapsulated within the nanoparticle. The researchers discovered that active anticancer agents got accumulated within nanoparticles through x-ray analysis and electron microscopy
