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Abstract:
Rice University chemists and Baylor College of Medicine pediatric scientists have discovered how to use buckyballs as passkeys that allows drugs to enter cancer cells. Research in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, describes how the researchers mimicked the techniques used by some viruses to introduce non-toxic bits of buckyball-containing protein into both neuroblastoma and liver cancer cells.

Buckyballs Used As 'Passkeys' Into Cancer Cells

Houston, TX | Posted on January 18th, 2007

Scientists at Rice University and pediatric specialists at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered a new way to use Rice's famed buckyball nanoparticles as passkeys that allows drugs to enter cancer cells.

The research appears in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry.

All living cells defend themselves by walling off the outside world. Cell walls, or membranes, form a protective cocoon around the cell's inner machinery and its DNA blueprints.

"Drugs are far more effective if they're delivered through the membrane, directly into the cell," said lead researcher Andrew Barron. "Viruses, which are often toxic, long ago developed ways of sneaking through cell walls. While we're mimicking some techniques used by viruses, we're using non-toxic pieces of protein, and we're incorporating buckyballs as a passkey."

The passkeys that Barron and colleagues developed contain a molecule called Bucky amino acid that was created in Barron's lab. Bucky amino acid, or Baa, is based on pheylalanine, one of the 20 essential amino acids that are strung together like beads on a necklace to build all proteins.

Barron's graduate student, Jianzhong Yang, developed several different Baa-containing peptides, or slivers of protein containing about a dozen or so amino acids. In their natural form, with pheylalanine as a link in their chain, these peptides did not pass through the cell walls.

Barron's group collaborated with Yang's brother, Baylor College of Medicine assistant professor Jianhua Yang at Texas Children's Cancer Center, and found the Baa-containing peptides could mimick viral proteins and pass through the walls of cancer cells. The peptides were found effective at
penetrating the defenses of both liver cancer cells and neuroblastoma cells.

"Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial solid tumor in children, and it is responsible for about 15 percent of pediatric cancer deaths," said Jianhua Yang. "Our findings are significant because neuroblastoma cells are well-known for their difficulty in transfection through the cell membrane."

Barron is Rice's Charles W. Duncan Jr.-Welch Professor of Chemistry, professor of materials science and associate dean for industry interactions and technology transfer.

Co-authors include Rice undergraduate student Jonathan Driver and Baylor College of Medicine postdoctoral fellow Kuan Wang.

The research is supported by the Welch Foundation, the Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation and the Hope Street Kids Foundation.

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About Rice University
About Rice University Rice University is consistently ranked one of America’s best teaching and research universities. It is distinguished by its: size—2,850 undergraduates and 1,950 graduate students; selectivity—10 applicants for each place in the freshman class; resources—an undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio of 6-to-1, and the fifth largest endowment per student among American universities; residential college system, which builds communities that are both close-knit and diverse; and collaborative culture, which crosses disciplines, integrates teaching and research, and intermingles undergraduate and graduate work. Rice’s wooded campus is located in the nation’s fourth largest city and on America’s South Coast.

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