Magnetic nanoparticles for oncology

In oncology, the classic therapeutic approaches are still based on surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy have the major disadvantage of being very aggressive, not just for cancer cells, but for all cells in the body.

Nanomaterials have opened up new perspectives in oncology. Cell membranes are permeable to nanoparticles. These can be directed by molecular addressing on their surface to target cells, thus limiting their effects on other cells.

Magnetic nanoparticles, and in particular magnetite nanoparticles, have the particularity of being able to be heated in a high-frequency alternating magnetic field, thereby delivering a significant amount of thermal energy to the cell they enter, leading to protein denaturation and cell death. They can also be directed, concentrated, maintained and eluted in different organs or tissues via a magnetic field gradient. These nanoparticles are thus of interest in the thermal treatment of malignant cells and in the vectorization of chemotherapeutic molecules.

In addition to eradicating cancer cells themselves, magnetic nanoparticles have been used to mark and isolate certain types of abnormal cells, or to purify proteins synthesized by cancer cells.

It quickly became apparent that, to be used in this field of biotechnology, these nanoparticles needed to have specific characteristics enabling them to be injected into the body and eventually to pass into the intracellular sector without triggering excessively important secondary reactions or degrading too rapidly.

In this article, we describe the characteristics of nanoparticles used in oncology and their influence on different applications.