Metastatic cancer poses a formidable treatment challenge. This application is based on our efforts to develop new technology to deal with treatment of invasive and metastatic cancer. We developed a treatment of glioblastomas (GMBs) that closely mimic the human disease with regard to the diffuse invasiveness of the tumors. The treatment modality is a novel nanosystem we have used to obtain an impressive degree of control over these tumors. The nanosystem consists of a pro-apoptotic peptide made highly potent by coupling it to the surface of nanoparticles, which are guided to the tumors by a tumor-homing peptide. This homing peptide also causes internalization of the particles into the target cells. It further has the unique property of delivering the payload to the mitochondria, which are the target of the pro-apoptotic peptide. Additionally, the iron oxide component served as an MRI contrast agent. The promising treatment results were achieved in the face of a complete failure of a number of other attempted treatments in the GBM models. More recently, we have shown that breast cancer is also a good target for the nanosystem. Both the GBM and breast cancer results have brought up the puzzling paradox that while we are able to destroy most of the conventional tumor vasculature, the mice ultimately succumb to the disease in the aggressive tumor models. Preliminary results suggest that the treated tumors develop some kind of alternative circulation that makes them resistant to further treatment with the nanosystem. We propose to characterize this alternative circulation and develop ways of targeting it for destruction. These studies will increase the understanding of how tumors survive anti-angiogenic and vascular disrupting treatments that destroy the conventional tumor vasculature. The results may also yield more efficacious treatments for cancers, including cancer types that are essentially resistant to all currently available treatments.

Public Health Relevance

We have developed a new tumor-seeking nanoparticle drug that is highly effective in mouse models of glioblastoma and breast cancer, including tumors have been resistant to other treatments. Although some mice appear to be permanent cured of their tumor, most tumors eventually become resistant and start growing again. It will be important to understand the basis of this resistance to find ways of preventing it from developing.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01CA188883-05
Application #
9459332
Study Section
Developmental Therapeutics Study Section (DT)
Program Officer
Fu, Yali
Project Start
2014-04-01
Project End
2019-03-31
Budget Start
2018-04-01
Budget End
2019-03-31
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2018
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute
Department
Type
DUNS #
020520466
City
La Jolla
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92037
Sharma, Shweta; Mann, Aman P; Mölder, Tarmo et al. (2017) Vascular changes in tumors resistant to a vascular disrupting nanoparticle treatment. J Control Release 268:49-56
Toome, Kadri; Willmore, Anne-Mari A; Paiste, Päärn et al. (2017) Ratiometric in vivo auditioning of targeted silver nanoparticles. Nanoscale 9:10094-10100
Scodeller, Pablo; Simón-Gracia, Lorena; Kopanchuk, Sergei et al. (2017) Precision Targeting of Tumor Macrophages with a CD206 Binding Peptide. Sci Rep 7:14655
Hunt, Hedi; Simón-Gracia, Lorena; Tobi, Allan et al. (2017) Targeting of p32 in peritoneal carcinomatosis with intraperitoneal linTT1 peptide-guided pro-apoptotic nanoparticles. J Control Release 260:142-153
Sharma, Shweta; Kotamraju, Venkata Ramana; Mölder, Tarmo et al. (2017) Tumor-Penetrating Nanosystem Strongly Suppresses Breast Tumor Growth. Nano Lett 17:1356-1364
Ruoslahti, Erkki (2017) Tumor penetrating peptides for improved drug delivery. Adv Drug Deliv Rev 110-111:3-12
Liu, Xiangyou; Braun, Gary B; Zhong, Haizheng et al. (2016) Tumor-Targeted Multimodal Optical Imaging with Versatile Cadmium-Free Quantum Dots. Adv Funct Mater 26:267-276
Braun, Gary B; Sugahara, Kazuki N; Yu, Olivia M et al. (2016) Urokinase-controlled tumor penetrating peptide. J Control Release 232:188-95
Paasonen, Lauri; Sharma, Shweta; Braun, Gary B et al. (2016) New p32/gC1qR Ligands for Targeted Tumor Drug Delivery. Chembiochem 17:570-5
Sánchez-Martín, David; Sørensen, Morten Dræby; Lykkemark, Simon et al. (2015) Selection strategies for anticancer antibody discovery: searching off the beaten path. Trends Biotechnol 33:292-301