Researchers in the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery at Boston Children's Hospital and at Cambridge-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology are conducting preclinical studies examining two methods that use a laser to trigger on-demand release of a local anesthetic, according to Medical Xpress.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nano Letters published the preclinical studies.
Here are five takeaways:
1. The anesthetic aims to provide repeatable, long-lasting pain management either directly at the site of an injury or by blocking pain signals transmitted from an injury. Researchers aimed to develop a laser that could be triggered as needed once it was administered.
2. Both methods in the studies used a lipid microsphere carrying tetrodotoxin, a potent local anesthetic, and a laser producing a focused beam of near-infrared light. The light penetrates tissues without causing direct injury.
3. In both methods, the microspheres' surface became permeable when it was exposed to the laser, enabling the drug to escape. The microspheres resealed once the laser was turned off, retaining the rest of their drug payload for later triggering.
4. Graduate student Alina Rwei, lead author of the PNAS study, successfully hindered hindpaw pain in rats by injecting the photosensitizer-containing microspheres near the sciatic nerve and testing the rats' reactions when stepping on a heat source. Researchers found they could adjust the level and duration of pain blockade by changing how often and for how long they exposed the injected microspheres to the laser beam.
5. Changyou Zhan, PhD, lead author of the Nano Letters study, injected gold nanorod-modified microspheres containing both tetrodotoxin and dexmedetomidine directly into the footpads of rats and testing the rats' reaction to mechanically-induced pain. Similar to the other study, Dr. Zhan found researchers could trigger pain control by repeatedly exposing the rats' nanosphere-injected paws to the NIR laser for up to five days.
"If we can translate these technologies to patients, it could change dramatically the way we approach postoperative pain care by providing pain relief that doesn't involve narcotic agents and which doesn't have to fade away within a few hours," said Daniel Kohane MD, PhD, senior author on both studies. "And in my mind, pain is the low-hanging fruit. There are many clinical situations and applications where repeated, modulated, on-demand drug release would be desirable."
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