Nanoparticles Boost Delivery of Lung Cancer Drugs 30-Fold

Lung cancer remains one of the world’s deadliest cancers, yet despite decades of effort to develop new drugs, many fail because they don’t stay in the body long enough to be effective or because they damage healthy organs.

Now, Adelaide University researchers have developed a novel nanoparticle ‘delivery vehicle’ that precisely targets cancer drugs to the lungs while helping to limit harmful side effects – a breakthrough that could reshape how the disease is treated.

Funded by Cancer Council SA and Tour de Cure, the hybrid nanoparticles dramatically improve how cancer drugs behave in the body, increasing their bioavailability by more than 30-fold while helping reduce exposure to healthy organs.

Senior Research Fellow Dr Paul Joyce said the research addresses one of the biggest barriers in cancer treatment: getting drugs to the right place at the right time.

“One of the major challenges in treating lung cancer is that many drugs don’t stay in the body long enough, or they spread to healthy organs and cause toxic side effects,” Dr Joyce said.

“Normally, much of a drug ends up in the liver – the body’s filtering system – instead of reaching the lungs.

“We’ve developed nanoparticles that act like a delivery vehicle, helping the drug circulate for longer and directing it to the lungs, where it can have the greatest impact.

“The nanoparticles ensure that more of the drug actually gets to where it’s needed – instead of being lost in the body – or affecting other organs.”

In preclinical testing, the nanoparticle-delivered drug showed stronger tumor-killing effects compared to the drug on its own, highlighting its potential as a more effective and targeted treatment approach.

This is about giving promising drugs the best chance to work, An easy way to picture it is like this: administering a cancer drug in the standard way is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. But administer the drug via our nanoparticles, and it’s like sealing that bucket so that 30 times more water stays inside.

By improving how cancer drugs are delivered, we can potentially increase effectiveness while reducing harm to healthy tissue.”

Dr Paul Joyce, Senior Research Fellow, Adelaide University

The nanoparticles are made from a combination of lipids and polymers – two materials already used in medicines – which encapsulate a promising lung cancer drug (RB‑012). Using laboratory experiments and preclinical models, the team tested how long the drug stayed in the bloodstream, where it travelled in the body, and how effectively it reached lung tumors.

While still in early-stage development, the researchers say the next step is to test the nanoparticles in more advanced preclinical models to confirm safety and effectiveness before moving toward clinical trials.

If successful, the approach could pave the way for a new generation of precision cancer treatments – not only for lung cancer, but for other diseases where targeted drug delivery is critical.