Medical engineering researchers have tried to implement an intelligent and targeted drug delivery with a natural medicine from barberry to treat cancer with nanotechnology.

Mahshid Giourian explained about her plan “synthesis and characterization of ultrasound-sensitive nanoparticles with structure of shell-core for controlled drug delivery”: this plan is a continuation of a doctoral thesis and has been implemented for intelligent drug delivery for cancer treatment.

In this project, she used a natural medicine, which is barberry extract with anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, anti-Alzheimer and etc. and also used the drug “Berberine Chloride”.

As targeted drug delivery in the world has been researched and studied with various drugs, this natural drug from barberry extract has not been yet used in intelligent drug delivery.

As targeted cancer treatment is very important and there are many lateral effects of drug treatments for patients, it is necessary to reduce the amount of drug in order to minimize the lateral effects of their use.

When a drug is used purposefully and entered to body through a vein, the amount of drug will decrease, which is the purpose of this research.

This project was conducted by nanotechnology and aimed at smarting. This system is biodegradable and high sensitive to ultrasound waves and due to nanometer size can easily approach to the target tissue with the help of ultrasound waves and affects on it.

After completion of animal tests of the system, which has expectable results so far, it will be commercialized to be available. It is hoped that this intelligent and controlled system will be provide more effective treatment with the least lateral effects to cancer treatment.