This proposal requests funds to help support the 1st International Symposium on Clinical and Experimental Metallodrugs in Medicine: Cancer Chemotherapy (CEMM) to be held from Dec 13 - 15, 2015 at the Sullivan Center, University of Hawaii Cancer Center (NCI designated center), Honolulu, HI (web-site: http://cemm.brooklyn.cuny.edu/). This international symposium will be the first one of a series that will be held every second year afterwards. This 3-days conference will attract about 80-100 participants including national and international scientists in the medicinal inorganic chemistry field as well as investigators in basic, translational and clinical cancer research. The main goal of this symposium is to advance anticancer metallodrug research and to use research findings for the development of new therapies by promoting collaborations among medicinal inorganic chemists and investigators in complementary fields. The innovation of this symposium is the sole focus on cancer and the address of issues pertaining to translational research in metallodrug development. The target audience for this event is primarily inorganic medicinal chemists but we have envisioned this symposium as an open forum that will include anticancer metallodrug experts along with pharmacologists, translational medicine researchers, scientists from pharmaceutical companies working in oncology drug development, clinicians and scientists/program officers from the US National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute. Indeed, we believe that the marginal involvement of such different expertise in the area of Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry is limiting the real potential of metallodrugs as anticancer drugs in spite of recent successes. In addition to other cancer treatment approaches, the development of lower-cost chemotherapeutics with fewer side effects than conventional used treatments is also worth pursuing. Importantly, part of this symposium will be focused on The aims of this conference are to: 1) bring together junior and senior scientists in the field along with investigators in complementary research areas in an international venue that facilitates formal and informal interactions, 2) showcase advances in the past few years with unconventional metallodrugs that have undergone clinical trials or that are the subject of advanced preclinical studies; 3) support the exchange of innovative and unpublished ideas in the field of metallodrugs in cancer chemotherapy; and 4) foster collaboration and networking between participants. The major themes of the meeting will focus on: 1) metal-based targeted therapy and prodrug activation strategies, unconventional anticancer metallodrugs; 2) new targets and mechanisms of resistance for anticancer metallodrugs; and 3) activation and drug delivery strategies. Ultimately, we expect to bring awareness to the cancer research community and pharmaceutical companies on the advances and potential of metal-based compounds as cancer chemotherapeutics.
The proposed conference is relevant to public health, since it will help advance metallodrug research for the development of new cancer therapies more effective and with fewer clinical problems than drugs currently used. Thus, the findings are ultimately expected to be applicable to the health of human beings.
| Fahrenholtz, Cale D; Ding, Song; Bernish, Brian W et al. (2016) Design and cellular studies of a carbon nanotube-based delivery system for a hybrid platinum-acridine anticancer agent. J Inorg Biochem 165:170-180 |
