Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PolyDrug Discovery (Discovery of anticancer polymeric drugs that mimic the action of TRAIL)
Reporting period: 2016-03-01 to 2018-02-28
The objective of this project was to develop a polymeric drug (PolyDrug) that mimics the activity of tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) for the treatment of breast cancer. Having such a polymeric and therefore synthetic replacement for this therapeutic would have tremendous benefits including greater drug stability and biodistribution. Therefore, this project outlined a two year plan to develop such a drug by following the standard drug discovery process.
While this fellowship is being terminated early, I have achieved the goals set out over this 10 month period. This progress is critical as I plan to continue this project in my lab at Rutgers University. I was successful in preparing a variety of death receptor targeting peptides and managed to select a few peptides with low nM affinity towards this receptor. This was a main objective of this first year and these peptides will move on to further evaluation in my new position. During this first year, I also optimized the technique for preparing the polymers and showed that we are able to make all drug variations needed for the drug discovery process. In parallel, I also developed the drug screening cell culture assay that is need to run the drug discovery process. This culmination of this work puts me on target with the fellowship in order to continue at Rutgers University.
This project is ongoing in my new position and the expected impact is still to be determined. Hopefully in one years time (as originally outlined), we will have a better update on the overall impact of this research.