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Donor Funding: $300,000
Cancer Type: Bowel, Breast, Leukaemia, Lung
Cancer Stage: Treatment
Funded in: 2023

Dr Paul Joyce
University of South Australia

The aim of this Fellowship is to pre-clinically validate and optimise the efficacy and safety of newly identified cancer therapies by using innovative nano-technologies that deliver the therapeutic directly to the tumour site. This approach will be investigated across four cancer types (being acute myeloid leukaemia, lung, breast and colorectal cancer), where the newly identified anti-cancer agents have demonstrated proven efficacies in killing tumour cells within the lab. The clinical translation of these anti-cancer agents, however, is significantly impeded by multiple biological barriers that limit their efficacy in killing tumour cells within the body.

To overcome this limitation, I will encapsulate the new cancer therapies within nanoparticles with well-designed properties that facilitate direct-to-tumour delivery of the drug. I hypothesise that these targeted chemo- and immuno-therapy nanomedicines will significantly increase the therapeutic index of novel anti-cancer candidates by improving their efficacy and reducing off-site toxicity, increasing their potency across multiple cancer types and fast-tracking their translation to the clinic for improving patient life expectancy and quality of life.

This Fellowship will thereby advance already established research programs with preliminary proof-of-concepts to position the new anti-cancer therapies for clinical translation at the completion of this program, leading to widespread benefit for patients suffering from the targeted cancer types.

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