Sep 26 2015
Two North Dakota State University researchers have received a National Institutes of Health grant award to study ways to use polymer spheres to deliver anticancer drugs to combat prostate cancers.
Sanku Mallik and Bin Guo in NDSU’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences are receiving a five-year $1.2 million Research Project Grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.
They will use the funding to study ways of using tiny polymer spheres to deliver anticancer drugs to combat prostate cancers.
The tiny spheres, known as nanocarriers, will contain conventional anticancer drugs and air bubbles. The air bubbles provide a means of tracking the nanocarriers through the blood stream via high-frequency ultrasound imaging. Researchers can determine when the spheres reach the tumor. Once there, the biochemical imbalances in the tumor tissues, along with the ultrasound technology, will “explode” the nanocarriers to release the drugs, Mallik said.
“The polymers already are unstable in the low-oxygen environment of solid prostate cancer tumors,” Mallik said. “We’re looking at whether we can increase the rate at which the nanocarriers release the drugs to get all of the cancer cells.”
Prostate cancer is the second-most common cancer among men, according to the American Cancer Society. About one in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
“We hope that the new drug delivery system will help improve the efficacy of traditional chemotherapy by selectively targeting the drugs to the cancer cells,” Guo said.
NDSU researchers regularly compete for competitive grant funding. In July, Guo received a $1.35 million grant to target colorectal cancer.
Kausik Sarkar, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at George Washington University, is the third principal investigator on the project.
The research is supported by the National Institutes of Health Award Number 1R01 GM114080-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
About NDSU
NDSU, Fargo, North Dakota, USA, is notably listed among the top 108 U.S. public and private universities in the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education’s category of “Research Universities/Very High Research Activity.” As a student-focused, land grant, research institution, NDSU is listed in the top 100 research universities in the U.S. for R&D in agricultural sciences, chemistry, computer science, physical sciences, psychology, and social sciences, based on research expenditures reported to the National Science Foundation. www.ndsu.edu/research As a student-focused, land-grant, research university, NDSU serves its citizens.
Source: https://www.ndsu.edu/