Gold nanomaterials for combinatorial photochemotherapy and theranostics

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most lethal cancer with disappointing prognosis profile; according to Cancer Research UK, about 19 patients in every 100 (19%) live for at least 1 year after they are diagnosed. Only about 4 out of every 100 people diagnosed (4%) live for at least 5 years, and only 3 out of every 100 (3%) live for at least 10 years. Around 8,000 patients are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer annually which is now the ninth most common cancer in the UK. At present, surgery is the preferred choice of treatment, however, in cases where operation is not possible, chemotherapy is followed by systemic drug administration. Gemcitabine is the front line drug for pancreatic cancer, with relatively moderate therapeutic performance; as a result physicians administer high gemcitabine doses to compensate for the poor drug potency which leads to unavoidable side effects including severe tiredness and breathlessness, anaemia, high risk of infection, and hair loss. In essence, current pancreatic cancer therapies have marginally improved the disease prognosis and have not addressed patient compliance issues.
In the present approach, we propose radically new therapeutic protocols that combine lasers and nanoparticles (these are small sized materials with diameters thousands of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair) to direct drugs at the diseased sites of the body in a specific manner without damaging healthy tissue. By pointing the laser beam directly to the diseased tissue, it should be possible to treat pancreatic tumours by activating the nanoparticles to release the drugs only within tumor areas and not to surrounding healthy tissue. Our proposed approach will allow us not only to guide the nanoparticles at tumor sites, but also enable us to precisely control the trajectory of the drug molecules within individual cancer cells to ensure that they reach their molecular targets. In addition, the proposed nanoparticles will be equipped with molecular imaging tags to allow for real-time monitoring of the therapeutic outcome during therapy. We envision that in the future oncologists will be able to treat cancers in a dynamic manner by continually adjusting drug dosage during treatment by gaining constant feedback information on the tumours' response to therapy by simultaneous imaging of the diseased area during treatment. The proposed concept, if successful, will constitute a conceptually new therapeutic platform which will open up new avenues in personalised therapeutics where the treatment protocols are dynamically adjusted to maximize the therapeutic outcome.

Due its multidisciplinary nature, AuXYGEN is expected to impact a number of different scientific areas spanning from nanomedicine, materials chemistry and chemical sciences in general, to biophotonics, cancer cell biology, and (pre-) clinical sciences. The new knowledge produced will be rapidly diffused to the corresponding disciplines by exploiting the PI's and the collaborators' excellent academic record in terms of publications and scientific networking.
The people who will be involved in the project will acquire diverse and transferable academic and professional skills not common in average academic institutes and working environments. In addition, there is a high probability that commercially exploitable research outputs will emerge as the proposed research area is largely unexplored (both nationally and internationally) and therefore we expect to contribute financially to the UK society through the UCL Business initiative. Finally, AuXYGEN will certainly contribute to our efforts to engage the public on the impact of modern nanotechnologies in future therapies for the benefit of the UK society and the world. In the longer term, cancer patients will benefit from the development of new therapeutic modalities based on our proposed concept.