Grant: Project Grant

Lung cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Patients with lung cancer are often treated with chemotherapeutic drugs injected into the bloodstream. However, these drugs are also toxic to healthy cells in the body, resulting in severe and debilitating side effects to the patient. In this project, scientists and clinicians will combine their expertise to deliver the drug more specifically to the lung cancer in comparison to normal tissue. This will be done by using endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS), an instrument used to diagnose lung cancer patients, in combination with micrometre-scale bubbles, a nontoxic agent for imaging blood vessels with ultrasound. The EBUS system will be used to stimulate bubbles as they flow through the tumour blood vessels, temporarily creating pores in the tumour blood vessels. This will allow the injected drug to preferentially flow into the lung cancer tumour in comparison to normal tissue. This system can permit lower doses of the toxic anti-cancer drug to better treat tumours with fewer side effects. This project will focus on evaluating the EBUS parameters, the bubble dose, and the timing and concentration of the drug injection in an animal model towards translating the optimum treatment conditions to patients suffering from lung cancer.