Grant: CIHR New Investigator

Chemotherapy is often the standard of care for advanced cancer. However, non-specific delivery of the chemotherapeutics results in significant side effects, reducing the therapeutic outcome and patients' quality of life. Dr. Li's research is focused on developing innovative drug delivery technologies to improve the specificity of drug delivery to tumors to increase cancer therapy and patients' quality of life. He will focus on further development of two proprietary technologies invented in his lab for the next five years: First, a polymeric conjugate platform, named Cellax, designed to target water insoluble drugs to tumors. Second, a temperature sensitive formulation developed to burst-release drugs within locally heated tumors. The ultimate goal is to translate these technologies into clinical use to enhance cancer therapy.