Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Johns Hopkins

该中心的目标是整合基于纳米技术的诊断和治疗工具，以提供全面的癌症护理。通过本申请中描述的四个相互关联的项目，我们展望了一个包含基于纳米技术的诊断、治疗和治疗后监测解决方案的癌症纳米医学诊所。 癌症纳米医学的进展为改善临床实践提供了巨大的潜力。我们假设，将改进的体外分析(项目1)与靶向化疗(项目2和4)和免疫治疗(项目3)相结合，我们可以在癌症纳米医学中建立一个新的范式。新的体外试验(项目1)将用于诊断和治疗后监测(项目2、3和4)。我们的总体目标是证明基于纳米技术的工具可以集成到全面的癌症护理中。我们关注两种高死亡率的癌症：肺癌和胰腺癌。 该中心的基本纳米技术重点是新型纳米颗粒。纳米颗粒工程核心和验证核心将把这些项目联系起来，为纳米颗粒合成、表面工程、新的靶向策略和毒理学研究提供支持。这四个项目的技术要求有相当大的重叠，使核心能够专注于有限数量的关键平台。生物信息学和数据共享核心将为项目提供生物统计支助，并将建立数据共享和数据管理机制。

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.