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Description
The incidence of cancer continues to rise worldwide, therefore, there is an urgent need for the development of novel treatment strategies for cancer patients. Among different cancers in humans, lung cancer is the most common cause of global cancer-related mortality due to late diagnoses and limited treatment interventions. Recent therapeutic strategies such as surgery, radiotherapy, chemo- and immunotherapy are still far to be sufficient for the effective treatment of lung cancer. Therefore, the application of nanotechnology to treat this malignancy unleashes a huge capacity to solve many unmet clinical needs . The project consists of a very ambitious and responsible transnational research and development program in the field of cancer nanotechnology used for personalised nanomedicine. The project integrates different nanoscience resulting in completely new ideas, methods and outputs that will be ready for further exploitation in early clinical trials. The project has a strong pro-industrial potential and will be measured due to defined short- and long-term outcomes. To highlight the long-term impact of project outcomes, the project will address several groups of stakeholders including nanotechnology industry, pharmaceutical industry and regulators. Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM) is the major transnational idea placed in the project, which merges interdisciplinary team of scientists, medical doctors and business ventures spanning the fields of different medical and biomedical sciences. These collective skills and expertise allow conducting the envisioned transnational studies crossing borders and ideas in cancer nanotechnology.
Summary of project results
The goal of this project was to "integrate nanoscience products and their technological applications resulting in completely new ideas, methods and outputs, based on the bioengineering of a highly sensitive and highly reliable multifunctional self-navigated MRI-guided and thermally-rearranged patient-personalized "Theranostic Exosome Drug Delivery System" (TEDDS). This system can deliver and monitor using MRI, an enzyme-based sensing program by a "Trojan horse"-like effect, employing radiotherapy combined with magnetic fluid hyperthermia treatments". This goal has been largely achieved by the partners of this project, as is documented by a plethora of publications at high level and multiple patent applications.
The applicant has designed and developed "smart" biological nanocarriers of the lung cancer cell origin enabled to (i) load different chemical and/or biological cargos to be used in personalized lung cancer therapy, (ii) successfully pass this cargo through different cellular and intracellular barriers without causing any foreign body immune responses and/or local and systemic toxicity events, (iii) release it into the lung cancer cells and their molecular targets or nearby surrounded environments, and finally (iv) allow to visualize of this entire process without degrading the cargos. These are remarkable achievements.
The theranostic concept of this proposal is to generate personalized weapons against cancer by engineering exosomes from a patient that can be used both as weaponized and targeting transport vehicle to kill the cancer cells. Such targeting approaches are very timely (CAR-T cell therapy). It is clear that this study is just the beginning of a lengthy journey towards a clinical implementation of the bioengineered patent derived exosomes. What would be next is the use of PDX models and additional toxicology to provide the basis for clinical studies.
Summary of bilateral results
“Together Everyone Achieves More” (TEAM) is the major bilateral idea placed in the project. The project merges national and international laboratories, clinics and industrial partners assembling the interdisciplinary team of scientists, medical doctors and business ventures from Poland and Norway spanning the fields of different chemical, biomedical and economical sciences. These collective skills of the international consortium allow conducting the envisioned transnational studies crossing borders and ideas. The project focused to the responsible technology development and contributed to regulatory policies by addressing human safety focusing on methods and endpoints relevant to cancer nanomedicine. Due to bilateral levels, the project aimed to use and validated novel in vitro methods and thus contributed to alternative toxicology (3R’s rules – reduction, refinement and replacement of animal testing with in vitro tests). Definitely, the partnership led to wider effects demonstrating how research and development in their core competence areas is essential for the successful understanding and development of nanotechnologies in today''s society. The three years collaborative partnership prepared our scientific groups for next joint applications in upcoming research grants within the European Union’s framework for the research and development and to commercialize the final products. The success of the project was measured based on six major bilateral factors including: schedule, scope, budget, team satisfaction, reviewer satisfaction, and quality of scientific work performed by Polish and Norwegian partners.