STTR Phase I: Testing Scalability of a Novel Drug Delivery Platform for Treatment of Gastrointestinal Radiation Damage

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The broader impact of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I Project is the development of an oral drug to reduce the side-effects of radiation injury to the digestive system, such as is common with cancer patients. Radiation therapy is one of the most important and effective treatment strategies available to oncologists. It is prescribed to more than 8 million cancer patients in the United States each year, but less than half complete their treatment due to the side effects. These gastrointestinal side effects include nausea, vomiting, pain, and problems with digestion – with the potential for long-term damage to the gut that can prove fatal. Presently, no treatments treat these gut-related side-effects of radiation. This project advances a treatment for this condition. This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will establish the feasibility of scaling a milk-exosome isolation technology as a first step toward using exosomes for an orally available radio-protective therapeutic. This award will establish proof-of-principle for a safe, orally administered drug delivery platform capable of delivering biologic and small molecule therapeutics for a range of diseases, with radiation disease as the first target. The first aim will determine scaling efficacy by testing each step at large-scale, then verifying with a panel of assays. The second aim will establish the radio-protectant potential of the therapeutic.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.