###Breast cancer pseudo-immuno targeted therapy via synthetic antibodies
Project ID: 2228bd1039 (You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Healthcare Technologies
UCL Lead department: Eastman Dental Institute
Lead Supervisor: Alessandro Poma
Project Summary:
When people are unwell, it is important to reduce the adverse events by administering the lowest drug dose possible whilst ensuring maximum efficacy. To fight diseases whilst minimising side effects on other healthy parts of the body, smart drug delivery systems (DDSs) are used, i.e. “small carriers” capable of loading the bioactives and driving them towards the body site responsible for the illness. Considering that the number of different molecules and cells in our body is astronomical, a precise “targeting system” is needed, and a current strategy relies on exploiting natural antibodies (and/or their fragments) that are specific for the target tissue. However, natural antibodies exhibit limitations (animal-derived production, high costs, poor stability/shelf-life), meaning that targeted therapies and diagnostics relying on these compounds and the DDSs targeted through them are not easily accessible to all patients or have reduced therapeutic efficacy. For this reason, the scope of this project is to use innovative, non-animal derived, synthetic antibodies as targeting systems for drug delivery, called imprinted nanoparticles (MIP NPs). MIP NPs have been around for the past 10 to 20 years, however their therapeutic potential has never been fully exploited, also because of the poor capacity of loading drugs within their small structure. In this project, MIP NPs targeting breast cancer cells (which currently kills >4 people/minute) will be conjugated to suitable nanocarriers (i.e., polymeric vesicles) capable of transporting chemotherapy drug cargos. The conjugation of these two technologies will result in a new, completely abiotic drug delivery system (“MIP’somes”) which will ultimately exhibit the possibility of tailoring its functionality and properties to the finest level (e.g., releasing the drug in response to specific stimuli, or achieving target multiplexing towards more personalised therapy). These newly produced DDSs will be tested on human cancer cells and compared to the existing antibodies-based systems.