Image-guided, focused ultrasound-triggered drug delivery technology for brain cancers

图像引导、聚焦超声触发脑癌药物输送技术

• 批准号: 10025617
• 金额: $ 85.42万
• 依托单位: APEIKON THERAPEUTICS LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10025617
• 关键词: Image; guided; focused; ultrasound; triggered

Life-saving cancer treatment comes with many side effects that impact patients' quality of life, often for significant periods of time. Patients also suffer clinical signs such as liver or kidney toxicity, reduced immune function that increases risk of infection and even internal bleeding. This exerts a heavy cost on the National Health Service, related to increased patient hospitalisation to monitor and manage these adverse effects.Apeikon Therapeutics is a UK based academic startup company developing a novel technology to increase effectivenss of cancer treatments while minimising their side effects. Conventional chemotherapy is administered systemically and distributes all over the body causing adverse effects. Instead, Apeikon's technology administers the chemotherapeutics in lipid envelopes (named liposomes) that have a tracker and are sensitive to triggered drug release using low-intensity ultrasound. The liposome tracker is detected by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) when the patient receives the treatment. This allows for the location of tumours and the precise focusing of ultrasound beams onto them. The ultrasound beam provides enough energy to break open the liposomes and release the drugs instantly and only within the tumour. The result is a 10-fold increase in tumour drug concentration and/or a 10-fold decrease in the required administered dose. The precisely targetted delivery means that other parts of the body experience a low drug exposure which should reduce adverse side effects. As the ultrasound causes virtually instant release of the drug load, and because this is imagable in real-time, the process may also be repeated within a short period (hours) to provide another burst of drug release that should further increase efficacy. Apeikon's technology has been tested in proof-of-concept studies in pre-clinical models of cancer, demonstrating the potential of the technique. This project aims to characterise and develop the technology further (in models of brain cancer), with the aim of getting it ready for clinical trials.The project is particularly timely with regard to the Covid pandemic, and the increase in cancer diagnosed cases due to lack of screening during the last two years. This is expected to produce an increase in late stage cancer and cancer burden in the coming years.

挽救生命的癌症治疗伴随着许多影响患者生活质量的副作用，通常会持续很长一段时间。患者还患有临床症状，如肝或肾毒性，免疫功能下降，增加感染甚至内出血的风险。这给英国国民健康服务体系带来了沉重的成本，与增加患者住院以监测和管理这些不良反应有关。Apeikon Therapeutics是一家总部位于英国的学术创业公司，开发一种新技术，以提高癌症治疗的有效性，同时最大限度地减少其副作用。常规化疗是全身给药，分布在全身，造成不良反应。相反，Apeikon的技术管理脂质包膜（称为脂质体）中的化疗药物，脂质包膜具有跟踪器，并且对使用低强度超声触发的药物释放敏感。当患者接受治疗时，通过磁共振成像（MRI）检测脂质体示踪剂。这允许肿瘤的位置和超声波束精确聚焦到它们上。超声波束提供了足够的能量来打破脂质体并立即释放药物，并且仅在肿瘤内。结果是肿瘤药物浓度增加10倍和/或所需给药剂量减少10倍。精确的靶向递送意味着身体的其他部位经历低药物暴露，这应该减少不良副作用。由于超声导致药物负载的几乎即时释放，并且因为这是实时可成像的，所以该过程也可以在短时间段（数小时）内重复以提供另一个药物释放的爆发，这应该进一步增加功效。Apeikon的技术已经在癌症临床前模型的概念验证研究中进行了测试，证明了该技术的潜力。该项目旨在进一步验证和开发该技术（在脑癌模型中），目的是为临床试验做好准备。该项目特别及时，因为新冠肺炎大流行，以及过去两年由于缺乏筛查而导致癌症诊断病例增加。预计这将导致未来几年晚期癌症和癌症负担的增加。