Thinking Small: Fighting Cancer at the Nanoscale

Innovative polymer technology operating at the nanoscale can deliver cancer-killing drugs to tumors without affecting healthy cells.

About the Biomedical Device Innovation Team
  • Traditional chemotherapy affects the whole person, often poisoning healthy cells while fighting cancerous ones. On the other hand, USTAR innovator Hamid Ghandehari thinks small. The more precision you have to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to cancer cells, the less you need to affect the patient’s healthy cells. By using nanotechnology to target drug delivery at the cellular level, Ghandehari’s research could mean patients receive earlier, more effective, and less disruptive treatment.
2008 Highlights

Launching the New Nano Institute of Utah

  • Ghandehari’s team focuses on the design of new polymers, nanoconstructs, and nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery.
  • He and his colleagues have launched a new company, TheraTarget Inc., to discover, develop and commercialize innovative polymer therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.
  • His research team is delivering on milestones associated with more than $7.0 million of federal grants (NIH and NSF).
  • Ghandehari co-founded the Nano Institute of Utah, with the goal of increased collaboration between researchers and industry experts in all aspects of nanotechnology, including nanomedicine.

     
2009 Goals

Collaboration and Commercialization

  • Secure up to an additional $3.4 million in federal funding in the near-term.
  • Conduct the first toxicity tests of novel TheraTarget drug delivery products.
  • Explore new industry-sponsored research through the Nano Institute of Utah and the Center for Nanomedicine.
  • Expand outreach activities to educate the public and Utah’s students on nanomedicine’s promise.
The newly-formed Nano Institute of Utah will drive industry/higher education collaborations to tackle our world's biggest problems. Ghandehari is co-director.

What's Small is Immense

  • Professor Ghandehari’s research has application to an immense market that may reach $150 billion by 2015. Yet for all the size of the biomedical device market, all of us know someone who’s been ravaged as much by the treatment of cancer as by the cancer itself. His research promises to enhance the patient’s experience in a dramatic and beneficial fashion.