Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

By virtue of their size and unique properties, nanoparticles hold great promise for improving the detection and treatment of cancer. Yet clinical translation of current nanotechnologies are slowed by concerns over their potential toxicity. To effectively deliver cancer drugs, nanoparticles must be large enough to be taken up by tumours and retained. Once they have exerted their therapeutic effects, however, such nanoparticles can remain in the body for a long time because they are too large to be removed by the body's clearance mechanisms, which can result in chronic toxicity. Here we constructed nanostructures that are large enough to accumulate in tumors by building layers of small nanoparticles connected together using DNA. We demonstrated that this assembly of nanoparticles could act as carriers for imaging agents and anticancer drugs. In mice, we found that assembled nanostructures improved accumulation in tumors, and, subsequent analysis of mice urine showed traces of small nanoparticle building blocks, demonstrating that assembled nanostructures had broken down and were small enough to be eliminated through the kidneys. This molecular assembly strategy therefore offers a clinically relevant solution to using nanoparticles in cancer medicine.