A team led by a professor at East China Normal University has developed a deoxygenated agent for cancer starvation therapy, the university announced.

The research result was published in Nature Nanotechnology, an international renowned journal.

The cancer starvation therapy was devised in 1971 by Judah Folkman, a Harvard professor. The idea is to destroy blood vessels of tumors and starve the cancer cells, thereby killing them off. Scientists from all over the world then began to research ways to put theory into practice.

But material that could be used to block the vessels was not found until the team co-led by Bu Wenbo, a professor at the university’s College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, and Shi Jianlin from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a material that rapidly absorbs molecular oxygen.

They developed an injectable polymer-modified magnesium silicide (Mg2Si) nanoparticle by a self-propagating high-temperature synthesis strategy.

The team stressed that the deoxygenation function of the agent could only be activated in the acidic tumor micro-environment, rather than in normal organs or tissues.