Research
Improve chemotherapy against cancer by using nanocarriers
Treatment of cancer using cytostatics faces several challenges, which make the therapy inefficient and sometimes also toxic to the patient. Not only will most of the drug be distributed at other places than the exact location of the cancer, but most of it will be excreted or metabolised in the body before it have time to act on the cancer cells. Also, most, if not all cytostatics have unwanted side-effects on normal tissue, ranging from rather innocent ones like hair loss or mild skin problems, to more severe and sometimes fatal consequences like loss of proper intestinal function, bone marrow depletion or heart failure. Although the use of several different cytostatics in combination have led to milder and more efficient therapies, the clinicians still face the dilemma where the side-effects of the cytostatic therapy is more severe than the disease itself.
An attractive way to improve cancer therapy by cytostatics is the use of dedicated drug carriers. Such carriers have size of 20-200 nm, small enough that they can circulate freely in the blood. They are often referred to as nano-carriers, or nanoparticles.
Our aim is to use such nano-carriers to improve treatment of cancer which cannot be removed surgically, such as leukaemias and solid cancers at a metastatic state.
Featured publications
Efficacy of multi-functional liposomes containing daunorubicin and emetine for treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia. Lene Myhrena, Ida Mostrøm Nilssena, Valérie Nicolasb, Stein Ove Døskelanda, Gillian Barrattc, Lars Herfindal
European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Volume 88, Issue 1, September 2014, Pages 186–193
Zebrafish as a model system for characterization of nanoparticles against cancer. Lasse Evensen, Patrick L. Johansen, Gerbrand Koster, Kaizheng Zhu, Lars Herfindal, Martin Speth, Federico Fenaroli, Jon Hildahl, Shahla Bagherifam, Claudia Tulotta, Lina Prasmickaite, Gunhild M. Mælandsmo, Ewa Snaar-Jagalskad and Gareth Griffiths*
Nanoscale, 2016,8, 862-877
