Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Alberta Cancer Foundation - Research (bridge funding)

Cancer is the number one cause of death in individuals aged 80 years and younger. Despite significant strides in understanding the mechanisms behind cancer, efficient and curative therapies are still missing. Chemotherapy is the treatment of choice in many cancers, but it causes severe side effects in patients and is not curative because many cancers are either inherently resistant to chemotherapy or develop resistance during therapy. The objective of this research is to design smart therapeutic devices in nanometer size range that can: a) search for invasive tumor cells through molecules on their surfaces that are engineered to recognize and interact with cancer cells (not normal cells); b) deliver material that can silence genes responsible for tumor growth, spread and resistance, only to cancer cells to weaken tumor cells; c) deliver high loads of anti-cancer drugs exclusively to weakened tumor cells while sparing normal cells from exposure to their toxic cargo after systemic administration. These new therapeutic devices are expected to minimize the toxicity of anti-cancer drugs, thus, increase the quality of life in patients receiving treatment, and at the same time increase the accumulation of anti-cancer drugs in tumor cells leading to better anti-cancer effect from these drugs. Integration of the tumor targeted gene silencing and chemotherapy is also expected to increase the sensitivity of invasive and resistant cancer cells to anti-cancer drugs thus enhancing the effectiveness of chemotherapy in the most dangerous cells in the tumor mass. This strategy can eventually lead to the eradication of the growing disease.