Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is caused by uncontrolled growth of abnormal white blood cells that accumulate in the bone marrow and interfere with the production of normal blood cells. AML is initially treated with chemotherapy but the drug therapy is not curative at the advanced stage of the disease and its effectiveness is limited by intolerable toxicities emerging after intensive therapy as a result of non-specific actions of drugs on healthy tissues. The ideal intervention will employ anticancer drugs that target the aberrant pathways specifically in the transformed cells, rather than displaying broad activities that affect normal cells. Towards this goal, this project will take a systematic approach to develop small interfering RNA (siRNA) based therapeutics for treatment of AML. We will formulate the siRNA into nanoparticles and evaluate its ability to curb uncontrolled cell growth and induce apoptosis in leukemic cells. Successful completion of this project will facilitate our efforts to bring a novel therapeutic platform to the clinical realm in the treatment of AML.