Despite the ongoing fight against cancer, the debilitating disease remains the second most cause of death in the US. This presentation will highlight our current research in an effort to intervene cancer development through marriage of dendrimer chemistry, nanotechnology and biomimicry, focusing on 1) novel nanocarriers for targeted drug delivery and 2) biomimetic devices for effective detection and separation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs).  For targeted drug delivery, we have developed a hybrid nanoparticle system integrating targeted poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers and poly(lactic acid)-poly(ethylene glycol) (PLA-PEG) nanoparticles. This unique design allowed us to combine the advantages of each nanocarrier, i.e., effective tissue penetration of dendrimers and prolonged circulation of PLA-PEG nanoparticles, in a controlled manner, providing a novel delivery platform.  Additionally, we have also found that the tumor penetration behaviors of nanoparticles are highly dependent upon the size, surface charge, and rigidity of the nanoparticles. For CTC capturing, we have developed a novel separation method using a biomimetic approach combined with nanotechnology. The biomimetic combination of dynamic rolling and multivalent binding via dendrimers significantly enhances the surface capture efficiency of target tumor cells by up to ~150 fold, compared to a surface with a single cancer cell marker such as aEpCAM. Recent clinical data obtained using our device will be also presented, which has shown the strong correlation between kinetic CTC profiles and clinical outcomes.  These results indicate that our CTC device with high sensitivity and specificity has great potential to be translated. 








Seungpyo Hong (University of Wisconsin)