Tension-Sensitive Drug Release System to Enhance Targeting Selectivity

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R21 · $609,641 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY Many pathological cells generate and transmit higher forces, compared to normal cells, in diseases including cancer, vascular dementia, chronic kidney disease, and hemiplagia. The high forces facilitate efficient internalization of surface molecules bound to their binding partners. We propose a tension-sensitive drug release system, where drug will be released from an implanted drug repository only when high tension is generated by pathological cells, so that the drug will only be ingested by pathological cells but not normal cells. As a result, only diseased cells will be killed by the drug. Because adverse effects of the current therapies mostly arise from the insufficient selectivity in terms of cell killing, will lead to enhanced treatment efficacy while reducing the adverse effects, thereby improving both survival rates and the quality of life for patients. Overall, our drug release system will be the first of its kind to selectively target abnormal cells based on the stronger force generated by the hyper-contractile diseased cells.

Key facts

NIH application ID
9957316
Project number
1R21EB029677-01
Recipient
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator
Yun Chen
Activity code
R21
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2020
Award amount
$609,641
Award type
1
Project period
2020-09-07 → 2024-08-31