| Project Detail |
A simple and effective way to improve tumour cell targeting and therapy uptake
Getting drugs to cancerous tumours and ensuring their uptake and efficacy is a tremendous challenge. Existing drug delivery systems that encapsulate the therapies have limited targeting. Attaching small molecules (targeting ligands) to therapy nanocarriers can improve tumour binding affinity and cellular uptake. However, current procedures to do so have harsh preparation conditions, limited success and poor control over the ligand’s orientation, the latter impacting its efficacy in the body. Funded by the European Research Council, the OatLive project aims to develop an efficient yet simple and mild method to activate on-demand nanocarriers of the therapeutics. It could not only enable new targeted therapies but also reduce the systemic toxicity of existing ones.
Current clinically approved drug delivery systems, such as liposome, PEGylated liposome, and polymeric micelle, predominantly rely on passive accumulation within tumor tissues by diffusion through the defective tumor vessels during circulation. The targeting efficacy toward cancer cells is very limited due to their inadequate interaction with cancer cells. The attachment of targeting ligands to nanocarriers has demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing binding affinity and, consequently, facilitating cellular uptake via receptor-mediated endocytosis. However, the conventional methods employed for ligand attachment suffer from harsh conditions, low efficiency, and limited control over ligand orientation. These drawbacks compromise the targeting performance and are believed to result in the current absence of a targeted drug delivery system on the market. In this project, we propose a simple, efficient, and mild attachment method to spontaneously activate on demand nanocarriers. This innovative approach has the potential to have a multi- level effect, first to revolutionize various fields, including drug delivery, diagnostics, and nanotechnology, by providing advanced tools for targeted therapies and diagnostics. Secondly, by developing novel methodologies that can be applied to existing technologies to enhance uptake, localization, and efficacy while minimizing systemic toxicity thus potentially shifting the health- economic balance for some treatments which were previously inaccessible. |
