Many cancer treatments have harmful side effects when they act on healthy tissues in addition to cancer cells. A team led by Garrett M. Brodeur, MD, director of the Cancer Predisposition Program at CHOP, and funded by a CURE grant, is seeking ways to increase drug delivery to the tumors to improve drugs’ effectiveness while reducing their toxicity.

Their method uses tiny nanoparticles as delivery vehicles. Nanoparticles are a promising way to get drugs into tumors because tumor blood vessels are leaky, and the nanoparticles can enter the tumor much more easily than normal tissues.

“By increasing drug delivery to tumors by one or two orders of magnitude, we can achieve dramatically better anti-tumor effects while simultaneously decreasing total drug exposure to patients,” Dr. Brodeur said.