Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Johns Hopkins

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The objective of the Center is to integrate nanotechnology-based diagnostic and therapeutic tools for comprehensive cancer care. Through the four inter-related projects described in this application we envision a cancer nanomedicine clinic incorporating nanotechnology-based solutions for diagnosis, therapy, and post-therapy monitoring. Advances in cancer nanomedicine provide tremendous potential to improve clinical practice. We hypothesize that combining improved in vitro assays (Project 1) with targeted chemotherapy (Projects 2 and 4) and immunotherapy (Project 3) we can establish a new paradigm in cancer nanomedicine. The novel in vitro assay (Project 1) will be used for both diagnosis and for post-therapy monitoring (Projects 2, 3, and 4). Our overall objective is to demonstrate that nanotechnology-based tools can be integrated for comprehensive cancer care. We focus on two high mortality rate cancers: lung and pancreas. The underlying nanotechnology focus of the center is on novel nanoparticles. The Nanoparticle Engineering Core and the Validation Core will link the projects, providing support for nanoparticle synthesis, surface engineering, new targeting strategies, and toxicology studies. There is considerable overlap in the technology requirements in the four projects, allowing the cores to focus on a limited number of key platforms. The Bioinformatics and Data Sharing Core will provide biostatistics support to the projects and will establish mechanisms for data sharing and data management.