Although treatment of breast- and colorectal cancer has greatly improved during recent years, we are still facing challenges related to metastasis, resistance and side effects of the treatment. In fact, patients experiencing promising treatment effects sometimes have to stop the treatment due to severe side effects. We hence want to further develop a targeted treatment strategy that has shown promising effects in animals with patient-derived tumors. The strategy is based on the use of nanoparticles developed by SINTEF containing a cytostatic drug. Injection of such nanoparticles results in a higher concentration of drug in tumors, reduced systemic exposure and thus reduced side effects.
The aim of this project is to further develop the nanoparticles towards a clinical use by demonstrating good effect in mice with tumors originating from breast cancer and colorectal cancer patients. Our results further indicate that the nanoparticles also target and kill pro-tumorigenic macrophages (TAMs), which can be important in order to avoid development of drug-resistant tumors.
TrippelTarg is a three-year research project financed by the Norwegian Cancer Society. The project is led by Oslo University Hospital and partners in the project are SINTEF Industry and Phoenix Solutions AS.