Speaker
Description
Despite the tremendous development of oncology, castration-resistant prostate cancer remains a debilitating malignancy. One of the most promising approaches to address this issue is to exploit the advancements of nanomedicine in combination with well-established nuclear medicine and radiotherapy. Following this idea, we have developed the radioisotope nanocarrier platform of electron-beam-synthesized nanogels based on poly(acrylic acid). This biocompatible polymer provides abundant carboxylic groups, which lead to excellent colloidal stability of developed nanoplatform and enable convenient bioconjugation. We have investigated various protocols for nanocarrier functionalization, based on distinct -COOH activating agents (EDC/NHS and DMTMM) for optimized conjugation yield of targeting ligand-bombesin derivative. This engineered peptide can bind gastrin-releasing peptide receptors overexpressed in prostate cancer, moreover, it bears radioisotope chelating moiety. We managed to demonstrate the very promising performance of our nanoplatform in-vitro - effective and specific uptake in PC-3 prostate cancer cells followed by significantly reduced cell viability as a consequence of delivered radiation. Even though our system requires further studies for more promising results in vivo, our study represents a vital advancement of radionanomedicine - a step, that will be one of many that will lead to effective therapy for castration-resistant prostate cancer.
