Theranostic Exosomes in Personalized Cancer Nanomedicine

Cancer is currently second cause of death behind cardiovascular diseases in the European Union. Among different cancers, lung cancer is the most common cause of global cancer-related mortality due to late diagnoses and limited treatment, leading to over a million deaths each year. Accumulating evidence suggests that lung cancer represents a group of histologically and molecularly heterogeneous diseases. Recent strategies, e.g., surgery, radiotherapy, chemo- and immunotherapy, to treat lung cancer are still far to be sufficient for suffering patients. The application of nanotechnology to treat lung cancer unleashes a huge capacity to solve many unmet lung cancer clinical needs and the potential for development in the coming future. Our proposal consists of an ambitious and responsible transnational research and development program of cancer theranostics using nanotechnology for personalised nanomedicine. The proposal integrates 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 thermallyrearranged 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. The TEDDS drug candidate will be tested in preclinical safety programs addressing common regulatory issues and using novel approaches such as 3D cultures, organ-on-a-chip, microfluidics and proteomic profiling. To reach these challenges, the project will merge multinational teams representing Polish and Norwegian laboratories, academia, clinical hospital, and industrial partnerships to elucidate different areas of biosciences, nanotechnology, clinical oncology and pharmaceutical business ventures.

PROJECT WEBSITE: https://tepcan.wum.edu.pl/en/events