Folate Gains Momentum as a Vehicle for Drug Delivery

Extract

Mothers advising their young ones to take vitamins probably never had this in mind. Folate, one of the B vitamins, is sneaking onto the drug development scene as a possible Trojan horse, able to slip drugs, imaging compounds, or even DNA directly into unsuspecting tumors.

Abundant in leafy green vegetables and nuts, folate is essential for healthy chromosomes and cell division. Most normal cells soak it up via a finicky chemical pathway that rejects all but the purest form of the molecule.

But tumor cells need more and more of the vitamin for accelerated cell division, so they deploy thousands of special folate receptors on their surface. These hungry little portals, less discriminating than their normal-cell cousins, gobble up relatively huge quantities of folate. If a growing cadre of researchers have their way, this voraciousness may ultimately be used against cancer cells.

The reason? Folate has a chemical structure ideal for linking to other molecules. Chemists can easily manipulate the tube-like folate molecule like a microscopic Tinker Toy, tacking on a chemotherapy drug, a radioactive imaging molecule, or even a small, fat-wrapped package of DNA.