As funding agencies allocate dollars for translational research, the Pennsylvania Department of Health has earmarked $1 million to advance a nanotechnology-delivered siRNA treatment for cancer toward the clinic.
Penn State College of Medicine gets the grant itself, which is awarded through the state's CURE program. Mark Kester, director of the Penn State Center for NanoMedicine and Materials, is the project's principal investigator along with James Adair, from Penn State's Department of Material Sciences and Engineering. Both are co-founders and chief medical officer and chief scientific officer, respectively, of startup Keystone Nano, a company's that revolves around the technology.
The cash infusion will help fund preclinical work regarding a NanoJacket particle developed by the pair. It's designed to deliver siRNA to a cancer cell and cause cancer cell death by stopping a specific mutated gene from expressing itself. Pennsylvania contract research organizations will handle the preclinical portion of the project, with a goal of determining ideal dosing and the best NanoJacket structure that will work in the body.
The focus on RNAi drugs represents tenacity among clinicians in the face of plenty of setbacks. RNAi treatments hold enormous promise in turning off bad genes that cause disease but there has been a struggle to find delivery vehicles to effectively carry the drugs to targets. With that said, the grant comes with a specific goal in mind, to develop a viable treatment that will warrant submission of an investigational new drug application to the FDA to begin human trials.
- read the release
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