Project description
A drug discovery platform for precision medicine
The gold standard treatment of ovarian cancer comprises platinum-based chemotherapeutic agents that bind DNA and cause cells to undergo apoptosis. However, the frequent emergence of drug resistance causes patients to relapse. Therefore, new treatment strategies are required. To address this unmet medical need, the EU-funded OvCaPreMed project will develop a pipeline for the identification of drugs and drug combinations capable of overcoming platinum resistance. The cutting-edge technology will combine tissue engineering, chemical synthesis and microfluidic technology. It will help screen drugs in patients with relapsed ovarian cancer who have exhausted all other treatment options, offering tailored alternatives.
Objective
OvCa for Precision Medicine: Personalized Ovarian Cancer Treatment using High-Throughput and Microfluidic Drug Screening.
The main issue with current Ovarian Cancer (OvCa) treatments is the eventual resistance to standard platinum-based chemotherapy, which ultimately leads patients to relapse. Identifying drugs and drug combinations that overcome platinum resistance by new treatment strategies is an unmet medical need in OvCa patients that I plan to address with our technology pipeline as a Proof-of-Concept. I, Deepak Balaji Thimiri Govinda Raj, under the supervision and mentorship of Dr. Dalu Mancama (Precision Medicine) and Dr. Janine Scholefield (Synthetic Biology) at CSIR South Africa along with Prof. Nicholas Dunne and Dr. David Kinahan at Dublin City University (DCU), propose developing a cutting-edge technology pipeline with which I will identify and screen drugs and drug combinations for relapsed OvCa patients who have exhausted all other treatment options. I will use OvCa patient samples to validate the drug screening pipeline as a Proof-of-Concept. Our technology pipeline includes strategies where I will combine tissue engineering (Prof. Nicholas Dunne’s team) with microfluidic technology (Dr. David Kinahan, DCU), Chemstress platform (Dr. Jerry Clifford, ValitaCell) and my expertise in chemical biology accumulated during my PhD and three post-doctoral placements. Using this pipeline, we aim to identify drug combinations that can overcome platinum resistance and ultimately provide tailored-specific therapy options for OvCa patients. We intend our technologies to provide clinically relevant drug combinations information to oncologists.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencessynthetic biology
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologytissue engineering
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
9 Dublin
Ireland