Project description
Targeted drug delivery with the aid of nanotechnology
Chemotherapeutic drugs are characterised by off-target effects in healthy tissues and often lower biodistribution in the tumour. The EU-funded SMARTRIOX project has developed a nanoparticle-based system that can be programmed to deliver the required drug to its target. This specificity is based on DNA molecules that respond to certain stimuli within target tissues and release the drug. Researchers will use this system for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive and difficult to treat type of breast cancer. The main advantage of the system is that it can be tailored according to patient needs at the hospital, offering an easily accessible means of drug delivery.
Objective
Although there are Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), the most aggressive type of Breast Cancer (BC), accounts for 15-25% of all BCs. Yearly 200,000 women are diagnosed with TNBC, of which 100,000 are diagnosed with metastatic disease at the primary diagnosis. TNBC lacks a recognized molecular target, making it an orphan disease: no effective treatment is available to date. The poor prognosis of patients suffering from TNBC makes it extremely challenging for both oncologists and patients. TNBC is more aggressive because all its receptors (Estrogen/Progesterone/Herceptin) are negative, and targeted and endocrine therapies are not helpful. TNBC shows a shortened disease-free interval in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings and a more aggressive course in the metastatic setting.The mainstay treatment for TNBC is Doxorubicin, a potent anthracycline chemotherapy, which nonetheless, has substantial toxicities (cardiac, immune, digestive and epithelial) that limit its maximal dose and render the tumour cells resistant to it. As a result, patients cannot be treated with a high enough and effective dose.In response, Triox Nano has developed TXN770: an innovative bionanoparticle based anticancer treatment. TXN770 has a DNAzyme machine cap that recognizes cancer cells and releases the chemotherapy exclusively inside them, responding to pre-programmed threshold levels of Mg2+ and ATP that are present primarily at the target TNBC cells. This allows using 4 times lower concentrations of Doxorubicin, which in turn causes less side effects and achieves a higher effectiveness. It also prevents cancer cells from becoming resistant to Doxorubicin.TrioxNano will address a BC world market of $10.4 billion, expected to grow to $17.2 billion in 2021. TrioxNano projects €547M in profit, with a ROI of €15 per euro invested in the project and in turn will help ease the economic burden of TNBC in National Health Services while positioning itself as a leading company in treatment of TNBC.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugs
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsDNA
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologybreast cancer
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmacokinetics
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materials
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
9518705 Jerusalem
Israel
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.