Namita S. Dodwadkar
Namita S. Dodwadkar Receives the AAPS 2013 AMGEN Travel Award.
Namita Dodwadkar, a doctoral candidate in Professor Vladimir Torchilin's laboratory in the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine received the “American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) 2013 AMGEN Travel Award” for the 2013 National Biotechnology Conference. Namita’s project is entitled “Dual Targeted Paclitaxel-loaded Multifunctional Nanocarriers Enhance Anticancer Activity.”
Liposomes have been in use for decades, they have often shown excessive accumulation and undesired side-effects in non-target organs. Tumor targeting and subcellular targeting are important for efficient delivery of particular drugs for maximum therapeutic and minimum side-effects. Mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to a large number of diseases including neurodegenerative, neuromuscular, diabetes and cancer. The concept of “Mitochondrial Medicine” involves specific targeting of mitochondria. The objective of the research was to develop a dual functionality nanocarrier, with transferrin (Tf) for tumor targeting and triphenylphosphonium (TPP) for mitochondrial targeting. We believe that such dual targeted nanocarriers hold a great promise as potential treatment strategy for cancer.