Grant: Operating Grant

In the fight against cancer, clinicians constantly seek innovative strategies to expand and improve existing treatments. One such is Chemoradiation therapy (CRT), which describes the use-in-combination of chemotheraputic drugs with radiation, to treat a wide range of human cancers. Our research has shown that certain chemotheraputic drugs can increase the amount and complexity of the damage radiation provokes in cancer cells and that much of this damage is generated by low energy electrons, which are among the most common reactive species that radiation produces. Our project will attempt to understand and harness the mechanisms responsible for the enhanced damage to better kill cancer cells. The approach will be multidisciplinary, involving physicists, chemists and biologists as well as clinicians. We will first study the combined effects of electrons and chemotheraputic drugs on DNA in molecular-physics type experiments that will identify the optimal conditions for producing the greatest damage. The effects of other agents will also be considered, such as gold nanoparticles that can increase the numbers of electrons, and radio-active molecules that can produce ionizing radiation from within the DNA. Consequently , new strategies will be next tested in experiments with cells and animals, where we will also determine the most appropriate means to deliver chemotheraputic drugs to tumor cells. Thus from the new insights gained from fundamental studies and validated by cell and animal studies, we will develop new protocols to improve the effectiveness of the CRT that cancer patients receive in the clinic.