Controlling Structure and Function of Polymer-Nanoparticle Assemblies for Health Applications

疾病的治疗是一个紧迫的挑战，涉及所有加拿大人。未来治疗所有形式疾病的一个关键是使现有药物更安全，更具体。靶向药物递送涉及药物与抗体或纳米颗粒的配制，以促进其靶向身体的特定区域（例如癌性肿瘤），以使它们更有效，副作用更少。聚合物纳米颗粒是一种被广泛研究的药物递送系统，它具有高度稳定性、生物相容性、生物可降解性，并且能够封装多种治疗剂，包括药物、金纳米颗粒（GNP）和DNA，为治疗性纳米材料（纳米医学）开辟了令人兴奋的机会。在本提案中，我们利用我们在纳米颗粒的聚合物官能化和聚合物纳米颗粒的微流体控制合成方面独特的综合专业知识，以及由CREATE计划聚合物纳米颗粒用于药物递送（PoND）实现的HQP培训机会和合作，以解决当前的研究挑战基于聚合物的纳米医学，从而开发令人兴奋的疾病治疗新策略。例如，我们将设计一种基于聚合物的纳米平台，用于同时向癌性肿瘤提供抗癌药物和GNP（增强辐射剂量），以进行靶向和强大的联合治疗。这项工作也将探索一种新的方式包装DNA在聚合物纳米粒子的基因治疗应用。这种方法将在递送前沿着递送后的选择性光触发释放提供对敏感遗传物质的更好保护，使得能够进行组合基因/药物治疗，其中选择性基因表达增加癌症对药物的敏感性，以获得更好的总体患者结果。

The treatment of disease is a pressing challenge that touches all Canadians. A vital key to the future of treating all forms of disease is making existing drugs safer and more specific. Targeted drug delivery involves the formulation of drugs with antibodies or nanoparticles to promote their targeting to specific regions of the body (e.g. cancerous tumors), in order to make them more effective with fewer side effects. Polymer nanoparticles are widely studied drug delivery systems which can be highly stable, biocompatible, biodegradable, and capable of encapsulating multiple therapeutic agents, including drugs, gold nanoparticles (GNPs), and DNA, opening up exciting opportunities for therapeutic nanomaterials (nanomedicines). In this proposal, we leverage our unique combined expertise in polymer functionalization of nanoparticles and microfluidic controlled synthesis of polymer nanoparticles, in addition to HQP training opportunities and collaborations enabled by the CREATE program Polymer Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery (PoND), in order to address current research challenges in polymer-based nanomedicines and thus develop exciting new strategies for disease treatment. For example, we will design a single polymer-based nanoplatform for delivering both an anticancer drug and GNPs (which enhance radiation doses) to cancerous tumors at the same time for targeted and powerful combination therapy. This work will also explore a new way of packaging DNA in polymer nanoparticles for gene therapy applications. This approach will provide better protection of the sensitive genetic material before delivery along with selective light-triggered release after delivery, enabling combined gene/drug treatments where selective gene expression increases the cancer sensitivity to the drug for a better overall patient outcome.