# PET nanoreporter image-guided breast cancer therapy

> **NIH NIH R01** · ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI · 2020 · $724,049

## Abstract

SUMMARY
 Breast cancer affects approximately 12% of all women in western and industrialized nations, resulting
in a total number of 230,000 newly diagnosed cases each year in the United States alone. Although the
majority of these women is cured of the disease, there still is a considerable annual mortality rate of 40,000,
which strongly motivates the development of more effective treatment options. An extensive list of
pharmacologically active drugs, known as chemotherapy, either given orally, systemically or locally, is
available to treat breast cancer. Unfortunately, a number of intermediate- and long-term side effects are
associated with systemic chemotherapy.
 A way to overcome chemotherapy's severe side effects is through more efficient delivery of the drug to
cancerous lesions. This can be accomplished by nanoparticles, tiny carrier vehicles that can be loaded with
drugs, known as nanomedicines. Doxil, a liposomal formulation of doxorubicin, was the first nanoparticle drug
formulation to be approved for clinical use. Since its introduction in 1995, the nanomedicine field has
undergone exceptional growth. The ability to non-invasively evaluate nanomedicine tumor targeting would
greatly improve patient care by allowing swift adjustments in dosage and/or treatment regimen.
 In this multi-PI application, which will build on an ongoing collaboration between Mulder's nanomedicine
group at Mount Sinai and Reiner's radiochemistry group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, we
propose positron emission tomography (PET) nanoreporter technology that can be applied for clinical grade
nanotherapeutics without the need for their chemical modification.
 Based on strong preliminary data, in this application we propose to 1) further advance our nanoreporter
technology to clinically relevant settings, 2) use it to monitor tumor penetration enhancing therapies, and 3)
generalize the nanoreporter concept to new chemotherapy nanomedicines. Our central hypothesis is that
our PET nanoreporter technology allows outcome prediction in mouse models of cancer and can be adapted to
a variety of clinically relevant anti-cancer nanomedicines. Through extensive validation imaging experiments
and imaging guided therapeutic studies we will test our hypothesis in different mouse models of breast cancer
and different disease contexts. We will also complement the non-invasive imaging data with flow cytometric
cell targeting analysis for the different nanoformulations. Successful completion of the proposed science will
provide valuable information for clinical translation of the nanoreporter technology in the post-award period.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9930546
- **Project number:** 5R01CA220234-03
- **Recipient organization:** ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI
- **Principal Investigator:** Zahi A. Fayad
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $724,049
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-06-15 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9930546

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9930546, PET nanoreporter image-guided breast cancer therapy (5R01CA220234-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9930546. Licensed CC0.

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