Nanoparticles are showing promise for bone cancer prevention and bone strengthening with a new drug-delivery system, Medical Daily reports.

The findings will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, thanks to a collaborated effort between researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). "There are limited treatment options for bone cancers," said study co-lead author Dr. Michaela Reagan, DFCI Center for Hematologic Oncology, in a press release. "Our engineered targeted therapies manipulate the tumor cells in the bone and the surrounding microenvironment to effectively prevent cancer from spreading in bone with minimal off-target effects."

The nanoparticlers were made of polymers and alendronate, which are typically used to treat and prevent osteoporosis, that bind to calcium. The largest storage of calcium within the body is in bones, which is why the nanoparticles were able to accumulate in high concentrations in the bones.

"Bone is a favorable microenvironment for the growth of cancer cells that migrate from tumors in distant organs of the body, such as breast, prostate and blood, during disease progression," said the study’s co-leader, Dr. Archana Swami, from the BWH Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Biomaterials. "We engineered and tested a bone-targeted nanoparticle system to selectively target the bone microenvironment and release a therapeutic drug in a spatiotemporally controlled manner, leading to bone microenvironment remodeling and prevention of disease progression."

By utilizing the nanoparticles’ ability to carry alendronate, they were also able to deliver tumor-killing drugs while stimulating new tissue growth. This enhanced strength, volume, and prolonged the survival for mice with bone cancer. Bone cancer usually develops when it metastasized from another place in the body, which means the patient was diagnosed with one type of cancer and it spread to their bones.