Development of force-dependent drug release system for to enhance selective killing and minimize adverse effects in cancer treatment

Unmet Need
Each year, 650,000 people receive chemotherapy in an outpatient oncology clinic in the US. This technology is a development of force-dependent drug release system for the enhancement of selective killing and minimization of adverse effects to cancer treatments. Current chemotherapies suffer drawback: normal cells might be and are often inadvertently killed. This is due to the fact that normal cells and cancer cells have similar surface molecules and are expressed on the cell membrane. Chemotherapy toxicity is also an issue because while normal cells stay normal in any environment, cancer cells are able to adapt to the therapeutic environment, causing them to be harder to kill while the normal cells succumb to the new environment. There is a need for a product that is able to kill the cancer cells with the number one priority of protecting normal cells. The problem this technology is trying to solve is this exact issue, in which it is a drug release system that will minimize adverse effects caused by conventional chemotherapy.

 
Technology Overview
This technology is a force-dependent drug release system that will minimize the killing of normal cells. It is a 2-step drug release system that will only target cells when simultaneously expressing specific surface molecules recognized to be an immunotoxin. Then it generates large forces that are characteristic of metastatic cells, but not normal cells. The inventors use multiple techniques including traction force microscopy, single-molecule force spectroscopy and microfluidics to verify the forces generated by various cancer cells are significantly higher than normal cells. This serves as the gate keeper to the release of the drug, only when experiencing the high tension that is characteristic of pulling cancerous cells. This is a highly selective methodology. They have designed a molecular glue that conjugates the drug, which contains immunotoxin, to the reservoir. The hold to the drug by the molecular glue can be broken when cancer cells bind to the drug and exert pulling forces. The drug will be released and kill the cancer cells. On the hand, normal cells, though might be able to bind to the drug, but will not be able to ingest the drug and subsequently be affected. This allows the sole destruction of cancer cells while mostly avoiding the killing of normal cells.

 
Stage of Development
Currently the inventors are validating their novel technology through rigorous testing in comparing the interactions of their design with cancer and normal cells.

 

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