愛愛後，男性會產生精子，健康的精子是孕育下一代的基礎，經由和女性卵子受孕，就是一個新生命！然如不是要受孕的精子，還有什麼用途呢？科學研究證實，精子能改造成為攜帶藥物的載具可應用於治療婦科癌症。
醫療科學進步，然癌症至今仍是無解！據調查，台灣每100名女性中，有4人會得到癌症，其中近一半女性是罹患子宮頸癌、卵巢癌、子宮內膜癌等。除開刀動手術外，就是以抗癌藥物治療，然以目前治療方法而言，能否準確瞄準癌細胞，而不傷害正常細胞，不讓癌症患者造成負擔也成目前醫學界的抗癌重點。
神奇！「精子」竟能成為的藥物運輸載體，還能有效應用於婦科癌症治療！《MIT Technology Review》報導，近期德國科學家發現了精子的新用途！科學家以公牛的精子作為實驗，讓精子大量吸收活性藥物，再在精子頭部安裝極小的微型架構，這個透過雷射列印出來的微型架構，可讓「精子」成為攜帶大量癌症治療藥物的微型電動機。
透過磁體牽引，當精子靠近腫瘤細胞時，真正接觸到腫瘤組織時，精子頭部可脫離精子，進入癌細胞。實驗中證實，精子頭部的安裝的微型架構，可促使精子運動速度降低43%，然進入癌細胞沒有什麼影響，未來可將此精子技術應用於婦科癌症治療。
然值得注意的是，這次科學家進行實驗的是使用「公牛精子」，然如果要使用人類男性的精子進行癌症治療，需考慮的問題還會更多，包括精子數量、攜帶藥物的種類劑量，另有人會擔心，這樣透過「精子治療」的女性是不是有可能會意外「懷孕」。
然這個新治療方法引發國際關注，因此方法和傳統癌症治療法相比，不會引起免疫系統反應，也不會造成其他不適或病症，也不至癌症患者的損傷正常細胞。因此醫療界也期盼這項研究能早日臨床應用，造福更多婦科癌症患者重獲健康！
http://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/
Sperm Loaded with Drugs Could Target Gynecological Cancers
Fitting sperm cells with a steering mechanism offers a new way to target treatments.
Delivering drugs to cancerous tissue is one of the more urgent medical issues of our time. The problems with drug delivery are many. These chemicals often become diluted in body fluids or absorbed by other organs. And even when they do reach their target, they cannot always penetrate cancerous tissue easily. So a better way to deliver drugs that overcomes these issues is urgently needed.
Step forward Mariana Medina-Sánchez and pals from the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Germany. They’ve created a unique drug delivery system that uses sperm to carry the active ingredient into a tumor. Their new approach is designed specifically for diseases of the female reproductive tract such as gynecological cancer, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory diseases, and others.
The system is simple in essence. Medina-Sánchez and co simply soak sperm in the active ingredient, which causes the sperm cells to take up surprisingly large doses. They then force the sperm to swim into a kind of mechanical harness—a self-tightening micromachined structure that attaches to the head of the sperm.
The harness is coated in iron, which allows the sperm to be steered by an external magnetic field. So the sperm provides the propulsive power while a doctor can direct it to the tumor.
The harness also has a quick release mechanism. When the device hits a surface, the force of the collision causes the harness to release its grip on the sperm which then swim away freely. The idea is that this happens when the sperm reaches the tumor, where it can then burrow into the tissue and into the cancer cells themselves.
Medina-Sánchez and co have tested the mechanism in their lab. For these tests, they use bull sperm because it is a similar size to human sperm. They load the sperm with a standard chemotherapy drug called Doxorubicin and then attach the sperm to mechanical harnesses.
They test the utility of the system in a variety of experiments in which the sperm swim toward and then enter a standard cancer model consisting of HeLa cells and HeLa spheroids, which simulate tumors themselves.
The results make for interesting reading. The team found that the harness significantly slows down sperm, reducing its speed by 43 percent. However, it can still move and enter cancer cells. They show that the mechanism effectively kills cancer cells and that the sperms cells can penetrate the cancerous spheroids, helping to kill cells inside.
That’s impressive work. Sperm has significant advantages over other drug delivery systems such as bacteria, which can trigger significant immune responses. And unlike bacteria, sperm cells do not proliferate to form colonies that can cause other problems.
Sperm have other advantages, too. They protect the drug from enzymes that can degrade it, and they do not dump their load unexpectedly, which is a potential problem with drugs carried in molecular cages called micelles.
Of course, the work raises important questions that Medina-Sánchez and co will need to tackle. For example, after delivering the sperm, the mechanical harnesses play no further part in the treatment, and understanding the way the body deals with and degrades these devices will be important.
Then there is the question of how well the amount of drug can be controlled. That’s related to the number of sperm that complete the journey and how much active ingredient they each carry and deliver. That will need to be carefully calibrated.
Finally, the team also needs to test this mechanism with human sperm. And that raises the question of ethics—whose sperm will be used for this kind of treatment, and what of the potential for pregnancy?
If these questions can be satisfactorily answered, the technique has significant potential. Every year, some 100,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with gynecological cancer. Better treatments are urgently needed.
“Sperm-hybrid systems may be envisioned to be applied in in situ cancer diagnosis and treatment in the near future,” say Medina-Sánchez and co.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1703.08510: Sperm-Hybrid Micromotor for Drug Delivery in the Female Reproductive Tract
