Rationally designed precision theranostics for cancer and its metastasis

Triple negative breast cancer (negative for estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 receptor expression) represents 15 to 20% of all breast cancers. It is a devastating breast cancer subtype that occurs more frequently in women under 50 years of age, in African American women and in individuals carrying a breast cancer early onset (BRCA1) gene mutation. The extremely aggressive nature of TNBC, coupled with fewer treatment options, has resulted in the worst mortality rates among all breast cancer subtypes and highlights the urgent and unmet clinical need for novel precision therapeutics and diagnostics to treat this disease. Within this context, our laboratory has focused on the development of targeted nanomedicines for this disease and others. Current cancer nanomedicines commonly suffer from poor tumor specificity, off-target toxicity and limited clinical efficacy. We have worked to overcome some of these issues by developing and validating a portfolio of tumor-targeted nanomedicines that include targeted, non-toxic immunoliposomes, nanolipogels and antibody drug conjugates. Our targeted approach leverages a novel platform that we have developed to screen and identify new molecular targets based on quantitative analyses. We have engineered and validated in vivo a number of targeted nanotherapeutics that can deliver a variety of therapeutics including siRNA, gene editing systems and chemotherapeutic drugs. To complement these potential breast cancer therapeutics, our group has identified and validated a number of non-invasive biomarkers for breast and other cancers that can complement these targeted nanomedicines with the goal of developing a precise theranostic approach to the treatment of breast and other human cancers.