Injectable Nanodevices Exhibit Potency Against Brain Tumors

A new nano-sized injectable technology developed at the MIT Media Lab has shown striking results against one of medicine’s toughest cancers. In lab tests, it wiped out just over half of the malignant cells in samples from patients whose tumors had stopped responding to standard drugs, a kill rate roughly five times higher than a common chemotherapy agent. 

Called HITMAN, the device performed just as well in animal testing. Mice given the treatment lived roughly half again as long as untreated animals, with no detected harm to organs including the lungs, liver, or heart. The count of newly formed cancer colonies also fell sharply, from around 150 down to just 26, a shift that points toward a lower chance of the tumor coming back or spreading. 

Those results are important because glioblastoma remains one of the hardest cancers to treat. Most people diagnosed with it live little more than a year past diagnosis, no matter how aggressive their treatment. Part of the difficulty is that the disease grows so deeply embedded in brain tissue that operating on it becomes extremely risky. The rest comes down to the tumor’s tendency to shrug off the field’s usual weapons, from chemo drugs to radiation. 

Researchers developed HITMAN specifically to get around those limitations. They built tiny antenna-like devices, each roughly a hundredth as wide as a strand of hair, small enough to be delivered by injection right next to a tumor. Once in place, clinicians activate a low-frequency magnetic field from a device positioned outside the body. 

That field passes cleanly through flesh and bone and causes sections of the antennas to flex and contract, generating a small, localized electrical charge right at the tumor’s edge. That charge interferes with the electrical processes cancer cells depend on internally, triggering their collapse, while sparing the surrounding, healthy neural tissue entirely. 

Deblina Sarkar is an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab who leads its Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek group. She said lab and animal testing pointed to slower tumor growth and longer survival with no detected side effects. She called the results an early sign the method could become both a targeted and low-risk way to treat brain cancer. 

For now, getting the antennas into place still means drilling through bone near where the tumor sits. But Sarkar’s team is also developing an entirely different method, unveiled the prior year, one that smuggles microscopic machinery inside the body’s own cells rather than delivering it directly. If applied to HITMAN, that approach could eventually allow delivery through a simple arm injection, letting cells slip past immune defenses on their way to the brain. 

The researchers argued that years of falling-short treatments show how badly the field needs a fundamentally different way to reach resistant glioblastoma cells. They pitched the new device as a low-disruption, tightly focused option with a realistic shot at eventually reaching patients who currently have few other choices. 

With entities like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) also working to bring additional drug candidates targeting glioblastoma onto the market, the future landscape of brain cancer therapy could shift significantly. 

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