Project

Improving the targeting of anti-cancer agents

Supervisor(s)

Area

Better Medicines, New medicines

Description

This interdisciplinary project is designed to translate across drug discovery and drug delivery and will be based within two of our research groups: ‘New medicines' (Prof MacKay) and ‘Better Medicines' (Prof Perrie). The research is focused on developing new compounds and new targeting strategies for anti-cancer agents. The project will investigate a range of small molecules inhibitors for the treatment of cancer and will investigate their formulation into a range of nanoparticles systems. Nanotechnology will be exploited to improve cellular targeting allowing for improved drug efficacy and reduced side effect profiles. A range of pharmaceutical analysis tools will be used to investigate and characterise the new compounds and a suite of manufacturing facilities will be used to formulate, characterise and optimise the formulations to improve drug targeting.

Techniques

This project will involve a range of nanoparticle systems including polymeric and lipid based systems. These systems will be formulated and optimised for their drug loading potential and then surface functionalised to exploit effective targeting strategies.

References

1. Joshi, S, Hussain, MT, Roces, CB, Anderluzzi, G, Kastner, E, Salmaso, S,Kirby, DJ, and Perrie, Y (2016). Microfluidics based manufacture of liposomes simultaneously entrapping hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs. Int J Pharm., 514(1):160-168.

2. Nguyen DB, Ly TB, Wesseling MC, Hittinger M, Torge A, Devitt A, Perrie Y, Bernhardt I. (2016). Characterisation of Microvesicles Released from Human Red Blood Cells. Cell Physio Biochem, 38; 1085-1099.

3. Daneshpour, N., Griffin, M., Collighan, R. & Perrie, Y*. (2011) Targeted delivery of a novel group of site directed transglutaminase inhibitors to the liver using liposomes: a new approach for the potential treatment of liver fibrosis. J Drug Target. 19 (8) 624-631.