The Use of Lipid-Polymer Nanoparticles as Chemosensitizers (2014)

Undergraduates: Sonya Kowalczyk, Dr. Manish Sethi

Faculty Advisor: Andrew Wang
Department: Biology

---

The main challenge for clinical translation of chemosensitizers is how to deliver them selectively to tumors while sparing normal tissue. While traditional drug delivery approaches is unable to accomplish such goal, nanoparticle (NP) drug delivery vehicles is ideally suited for chemosensitizers. NPs are known to accumulate in tumors while having low distribution in normal tissue. In this project, we utilized an established NP platform to deliver wortmannin, a known chemosensitizer. Performing in vivo and in vitro studies on lung cancer cell lines, we found that nanoparticle wortmannin had a significantly decreased toxicity and increased efficacy when compared to free wortmannin as a chemosensitizer for clinically approved chemotherapeutic drugs.