Cancerous diseases remain one of the most critical issues for the modern medicine. Therefore, the development of the techniques for anticancer agent delivery is urgent. Sonoporation (SP) involves non-invasive application of medical ultrasound (US) in combination with microbubbles (MBs) in order to attain spatio-temporally controlled cytolethal drug delivery to cells and tumors. SP applications allow for the theranostics of the tumor: therapy of deeply located malignant tumors as well as simultaneous US-MB-assisted diagnostics. Despite wide-ranging use, conventional chemotherapeutics introduce deleterious side-effects and systemic toxicity to the organism. Calcium ion (Ca2+) application is proposed as an alternative for conventional chemotherapy, since Ca2+ plays a major role in the coordination of cell fatal mechanisms, while supra-physiological amounts of Ca2+ are well-disposed by the homeostatic system. Therefore, the employment of Ca2+ for cancer therapy would to significantly diminish detrimental after-effects, imposed by conventional cytotoxic drugs (bleomycin, doxorubicin, etc.).
However, despite current advances, there are no investigations, performed on the development of the side-effect-free technology for Ca2+ applications for pernicious tumor treatment. The aim of the project – to develop standardized technology for targeted and spatio-temporally controlled Ca2+ delivery to cells and tumors for efficient sonochemotherapy. The main focus of our project is to validate Ca2+ as anticancer agent and test its efficiency in comparison to conventional anticancer drugs.
Project funding:
Research Council of Lithuania (RCL), Projects of Postdoctoral fellowships funded by the state budget of the Republic of Lithuania
Project results:
The standardized technology for targeted and spatio-temporally controlled Ca2+ delivery to cells and tumors for efficient sonochemotherapy is being developed. Also, validation Ca2+ as anticancer agent and testing its efficiency in comparison to conventional anticancer drugs.
Period of project implementation: 2022-11-03 - 2024-11-02
Project coordinator: Kaunas University of Technology
