Namita S. Dodwadkar
Namita S. Dodwadkar Receives the AAiPS 2011 Student Scholar 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 Indian Pharmaceutical Scientists 2011 Student Scholar Award”. Ms. Dodwadkar’s project is entitled “Delivery of Chemotherapeutic Paclitaxel (PTX) with Liposomes Modified with PEG-PE Based Mitochondriotropic Polymer Results in Enhancement of Anti-tumor Efficacy In Vitro and In Vivo.”
Organelle-specific targeting improves the efficacy and reduces the side-effects of therapeutics. This study aimed to develop mitochondriotropic liposomes with a novel mitochondrial-targeted PEG-PE-based polymer and demonstrate the potential of the functionalized liposomes to deliver the PTX pay-load to mitochondria and subsequently enhance cytotoxic efficacy in vitro and in vivo.
The delivery of PTX in mitochondria by mitochondrial-targeted liposomes is a promising approach for improvement of PTX-mediated cytotoxicity. We believe that such mitochondrial-targeted non-toxic liposomes may be applied for specific delivery of therapeutics to mitochondria and could be a useful anticancer treatment strategy.