Treatment of Cancer with Nitric Oxide?

Cancer treatment is always one of the most highly discussed medical therapies. Currently, many treatments for cancer are not only toxic to the cancerous cells, but also to the person who is receiving the treatment. There is a need for new therapy for cancer treatment, with the ideal one targeting only cancerous cells and leaving normal cells (relatively) unaffected. It has been noted for around 20 years that nitric oxide (NO) may have a role in cancer treatment, as it has been shown to cause tumor cell death at high doses. This leads to the question, what levels of NO are needed to cause tumor cell death and how do you deliver the nitric oxide?

During my senior year of undergrad, I worked in a biomedical engineering lab that focused on these questions. Using a novel delivery method developed in by the lab, we were able to direct gaseous NO directly to a designated spot on a culture of MDA-MB-231, which is an isolate of breast cancer tissue. Through these experiments, we were able to vary the amount of NO we delivered and ran trials to try to find the level of NO that best killed the targeted area of cells while not affecting cells in the surrounding area. To visualize this, this picture shows how varying the amount of NO can affect cells.

For future studies, we would have continued to test more levels, as well as the effects on normal cells. The main goal would have been to find a level that kills the cancerous cells but leaves normal cells intact. Other groups in the lab were working to develop a delivery method. Thoughts were that a nanoparticle delivery method could be used, which would allow for specific targeting of the cancerous cells, then would release the NO to the cancerous cells. I finished my work and graduated before any of this work was done.