I am delighted to say that Tenovus Scotland, a medical research charity based in Scotland, have awarded a small pilot grant to the groups of Dr Lewis MacKenzie, Dr Shiao Chow, and Dr Natividad Gomez-Roman to investigate the application of upconversion nanoparticles to “track and treat” glioblastoma. This funding will supercharge the PhD research of Ciera Connelly, who will be able to take her glioblastoma targeting upconversion nanoparticles out of the chemistry lab and test their drug delivery and anti-cancer capability in clinically relevant glioblastoma cell lines.

Targeted capability is incredibly important for cancer therapy because it is essential to deliver drugs hyper-locally to the tumour to avoid off-target side effects. This funding is a really exciting opportunity to develop upconversion nanoparticles as a useful medical technology. They offer unparalled abilities to be tracked via light (in the 1st near infrared biological window) but also via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) making them potentially very powerful for not just targeting drug delivery, but verifying that delivery too!

Thanks to Tenovus Scotland once again - we are looking forward to pushing this research forward further.

This line of research was also supported by the University of Strathclyde Centre for Doctoral Training in Bridging Research and Advancements in Neurological Sciences (BRAINS), which has funded Ciera’s PhD studentship.

Lewis