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DR. OMID C. FAROKHZAD
The article
Forbes salutes nanoparticle chemotherapy said
Forbes has highlighted the important role of nanotechnology in driving
forward the pharmaceutical industry with three of their top five
nanotech breakthroughs in 2006 having biological
applications.
Speaking to Drugresearcher.com, Dr Omid Farokhzad from Harvard
University, US, said: "Our targeted nanoparticles are designed and
engineered to differentiate tumor cells from normal cells and once
inside the cancer cell, to release their chemotherapy
payload.
"We are able to get a substantially higher dose inside the cancer cell
but actually using a much lower overall dose."
Omid C. Farokhzad, M.D.
is Assistant Professor at
Harvard Medical School (HMS) — a
practicing physician in the Department of Anesthesiology at Brigham and
Women's Hospital (BWH) — and a project leader in the
MIT-Harvard
Center for
Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence. He is a graduate of Boston
University
School of Medicine and completed his post-graduate clinical and
research
training, respectively, at BWH/HMS and at the laboratory of Professor
Robert
Langer at MIT.
Omid has pioneered the application of micro-
and
nanotechnologies for high throughput development and screening of
targeted
drug delivery systems for a myriad of clinical applications — most
notably
cancer. His research group is focused on the development and
engineering of
smart nanoparticles for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Other
areas
of focus include drug target identification and validation; and high
throughput synthesis and screening of nanomaterials for drug delivery.
Recent work from Omid's group includes the development of
targeted
nanoparticles capable of recognizing prostate cancer specifically and
these
were able to eradicate tumors in mouse models of prostate cancer. More
recently his group has developed "smart" targeted nanoparticles
capable of
delivering drugs to prostate cancer cells while simultaneously imaging
the
cancer location. These newer generation nanoparticles were also
engineered
to have a reporter component allowing them to signal when they have
delivered
their therapeutic payload. Other active efforts in the lab include the
engineering of targeted nanoparticles for breast, pancreatic and
ovarian
cancers and cardiovascular indications.
His work has been the subject of extensive press coverage
including approximately 200 written articles and being featured on the
cover
of Popular Science. He has been featured on multiple national and
international TV and radio news shows including a national ABC coverage
in
USA. He has authored approximately 30 publications and is an
inventor on 15 patent applications.
Omid coauthored
Nanoparticle-Aptamer Bioconjugates:
A New Approach for Targeting Prostate Cancer Cells,
Magnetically Responsive Polymeric Microparticles for Oral Delivery
of Protein Drugs,
Regulation of epithelial transport and barrier function by
distinct protein kinase C isoforms,
CD43 gene expression is mediated by a nuclear factor which binds
pyrimidine-rich single-stranded DNA,
Micropatterned cell co-cultures using layer-by-layer deposition
of extracellular matrix components, and
PKC-epsilon regulates basolateral
endocytosis in human T84 intestinal epithelia: role of F-actin and
MARCKS.
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