Project description
Novel nanomedicine for pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer is considered one of the most aggressive types of cancer, often remaining undetected in its early stages due to a lack of specific symptoms. It is characterised by overall poor prognosis, low survival rate, and limited treatment options. To offer treatment alternatives to patients, the EU-funded NoCanTher project aims to develop nanoparticles that are functionalised to target pancreatic cancer cells and deliver an anticancer drug. Researchers will bring this nanoformulation forward for clinical development, which includes scaling up production under certified conditions and optimising various parameters for use in patients.
Objective
This project has been amended in July 2019 to better align the described tasks and timeline with the current status of the project.
The preceding Multifun Consortium (FP7 project Nº. 262943) has developed and validated distinct nanoformulations as therapeutic approach against pancreatic and breast cancer. These nanoformulations are based on magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (MNP) multifuntionalised with a target peptide and an anticancer chemical drug, allowing for a synergistic therapeutic effect produced by the combination of intracellular drug delivery and magnetic hyperthermia. In particular, some of the designed formulations (patent filed PCT/EP2015/056631) have proven their efficacy, safety and non-toxicicty, in in vitro and in vivo studies, against the mentioned cancers, thus making them promising candidates to produce a novel nanomedicine therapy for cancer.
NoCanTher aims at translating one of these nanoformulations to early clinical development for pancreatic cancer. Particularly, we plan to assess bare nanoparticles (System B) and multifunctional nanoparticles (System A) in advanced preclinical models and run a clinical study with the System B. To successfully reach this objective, we will concentrate our efforts in two main group of activities:
• Nanotherapeutic up-scaling under Certfified conditions: NoCanTher will scale up the manufacturing of the proposed nanoformulation from milligram-scale laboratory synthesis up to multigram-scale production to generate sufficient material for clinical and regulatory assays. To this aim, a certified production line will be optimised and the relevant quality control will be conducted at the different stages of the up-scaling process.
• Clinical Study: NoCanTher will include late preclinical parameter testing to raise a clinical treatment protocol, regulatory assays, as well as the design of the clinical study and the preparation of the Investigational Medicinal Device Dossier (IMDD).
This strategy will allow us to apply for Clinical Study Authorisation (CSA) then, we will carry out a Clinical Study. NoCanTher involves the participation of 11 institutions from three different sectors (academia, industry, clinical) and from five different countries (Ireland, France, Germany, Spain and the UK).
Fields of science
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologyprostate cancer
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologynanomedicine
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologybreast cancer
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materials
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologypancreatic cancer
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
28049 Madrid
Spain