{"id":223307,"date":"2025-10-12T19:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T00:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/peptide-nanotubes-show-promise-for-overcoming-chemotherapy-resistance"},"modified":"2025-10-12T19:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T00:11:13","slug":"peptide-nanotubes-show-promise-for-overcoming-chemotherapy-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/peptide-nanotubes-show-promise-for-overcoming-chemotherapy-resistance","title":{"rendered":"Peptide nanotubes show promise for overcoming chemotherapy resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/peptide-nanotubes-show-promise-for-overcoming-chemotherapy-resistance.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A research team at CiQUS (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain) has unveiled an innovative molecular approach that enables anticancer drugs to reach the nucleus of tumor cells, where they can exert their therapeutic effect. The study focused on doxorubicin, a widely used chemotherapy agent. Prolonged exposure to this drug often leads to the emergence of resistant cells, a major clinical challenge that this strategy successfully overcomes while preserving the drug\u2019s antitumor activity.<\/p>\n<p>The approach builds on a simple but powerful concept: the ability of cyclic peptides \u2014small amino acid rings\u2014 to stack and self-assemble into hollow cylindrical structures (nanotubes) on the surface of cancer cell membranes. The system, developed by the team led by Juan R. Granja, couples doxorubicin to these peptides and directs it to the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cell+nucleus\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cell nucleus<\/a> through a delivery pathway that differs from the drug\u2019s usual mechanism. This allows the drug to bypass the cellular resistance mechanisms that would normally deactivate it.<\/p>\n<p>Compared with healthy cells, cancer cell membranes contain higher levels of negatively charged lipids. The cyclic peptides used in this study display a strong affinity for these anionic surfaces, facilitating their interaction with <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/tumor+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">tumor cells<\/a>. As a result, the peptide\u2013drug conjugates enter resistant cells and travel towards the nucleus, where doxorubicin intercalates with DNA to trigger its cytotoxic effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research team at CiQUS (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain) has unveiled an innovative molecular approach that enables anticancer drugs to reach the nucleus of tumor cells, where they can exert their therapeutic effect. The study focused on doxorubicin, a widely used chemotherapy agent. Prolonged exposure to this drug often leads to the emergence [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}