Collaborative Research: Modeling and Control of Magnetic Chemotherapy

这一合作研究奖的目的是改善化疗药物对目标肿瘤的输送。据估计，在现有的化疗中，只有不到0.1%的药物被肿瘤吸收，其余99.9%的药物进入健康组织，并造成严重的危及生命的副作用。在磁性药物靶向中，化疗可以附着在生物相容性的磁性颗粒上。这样就可以对药物进行磁性控制——放置在病人体外的磁铁可以潜在地用于将治疗集中到肿瘤上。这样做是困难的。人体是复杂的，目前还不知道如何驱动磁铁（何时打开和关闭它们），以最好地将药物引导到肿瘤。该项目的目标是开发复杂的、经过实验验证的工具，以更好地了解磁化化疗是如何在体内运动的，并在此基础上开发出最佳驱动磁铁的方法，以更好地将化疗引向肿瘤。如果成功的话，更广泛的影响将是一套改进磁性药物靶向的技术——有可能将其从只能将药物集中在单个浅层肿瘤上，转变为可以治疗深部肿瘤以及遍布全身的小而血管化不良的转移性肿瘤。该项目是癌症临床医生、工程师和数学家之间的合作成果，并将通过训练学生在这三个领域的交叉领域有效地工作，使这些领域在很大程度上更加紧密地联系在一起。高中生、本科生和研究生将参与研究，并每周与医生、工程师和数学家进行互动。

The objective of this collaborative research award is to improve the delivery of chemotherapy drugs to its target tumors. With existing chemotherapy, it is estimated that less than 0.1 percent of the administered drugs are taken up by the tumor, the remaining 99.9 percent go to healthy tissue and cause severe and life-threatening side-effects. In magnetic drug targeting, chemotherapy can be attached to biocompatible magnetic particles. This allows magnetic control of the drugs - magnets placed outside the patient can potentially be used to focus the therapy to tumors. Doing so is difficult. The human body is complex and it is not yet understood how to actuate the magnets (when to turn them on and off) to best direct the drugs to the tumors. The goal of this project is to develop sophisticated and experimentally-validated tools to better understand how magnetized chemotherapy moves through the body, and based on these to develop methods to optimally actuate the magnets to better direct the chemotherapy to tumors.If successful, the broader impact will be a suite of techniques to improve magnetic drug targeting - potentially moving it from a method that could only focus drugs to single shallow tumors, to one that could access deep tumors as well as small and poorly vascularized metastatic tumors spread throughout the body. This project is a collaborative effort between cancer clinicians, engineers, and mathematicians, and will also serve to bring these fields closer together in major part by training students to work effectively at the intersection of these three areas. High school, undergraduate, and graduate students will be involved in the research, and will interact with doctors, engineers, and mathematicians on a weekly basis.