OREANDA-NEWS  Nanosensors for monitoring the concentration of doxorubicin, a common substance for chemotherapy of malignant tumors, were created by SSU scientists. According to them, the development will reduce the side effects of treatment by adjusting the dose of the drug taking into account the characteristics of the patient's body. The results are published in the journal Biosensors.

Doxorubicin is a substance with antitumor activity, widely used in the treatment of oncological diseases of the breast, ovaries, thyroid gland, stomach and other organs. The effect of drugs based on it is to damage the components of tumor cells, leading to their death.

However, the effect of doxorubicin is indiscriminate, experts explained: healthy cells, primarily heart and nervous tissue, also come under attack. Therefore, it is extremely important for oncologists to maintain an optimal concentration of the drug in the patient's blood, in which the therapeutic effect prevails over the side effects.

Scientists of the Saratov National Research State University named after N.G. Chernyshevsky have developed nanosensors for fast and accurate determination of the concentration of doxorubicin in the blood. Sensors are quantum dots whose light radiation falls when interacting with drug molecules.

"Since the dangerous level of doxorubicin concentration and its distribution in the body depend on the characteristics of each patient, simple cheap monitoring methods are needed, which are not available today. For this task, liquid chromatography is usually used, which requires long and expensive sample preparation," explained Professor Irina Goryacheva, Head of the Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry of SSU.

The developed quantum dots, i.e. semiconductor nanoparticles, have a special modification of the surface to bind the maximum volume of doxorubicin molecules, the university reported.