The University of Nebraska Board of Regents today approved the creation of The Nebraska Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine (CDDN) to develop innovative tools for improving drug delivery systems through nanoscale technologies.
In the future, such research could yield implantable devices — 100,000 times smaller than the head of a pin — that can effectively detect disease without surgical invasion, and then eradicate it by releasing life-saving medicines precisely when and where needed.
Such “nanodevices,” which allow major advances in drug delivery applications, already are being tested in human clinical trials. “These studies have enabled this field to not only be dubbed futuristic, but also realistic with a clear potential to contribute to human health within the next decade,” said Alexander “Sasha” Kabanov, Ph.D., D.Sc., director of the CDDN and Parke-Davis professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“The CDDN will provide the foundation for breakthrough research that translates into clinical benefits for cancer and possibly neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases,” Dr. Kabanov said. “It also will allow Nebraska to emerge as a leader in the growing area of biomedical research.”
The interdisciplinary center, a collaborative effort of UNMC, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Creighton University, will initially involve 31 faculty members, although that number is expected to grow.
“The CDDN will help us realize important scientific potential, as well as help us in recruiting, developing and retaining promising young investigators in Nebraska,” Dr. Kabanov said.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), work at the “nano” scale level could yield big results in the treatment and diagnosis of many diseases over the next decade. The use of nanoscale technologies to design novel drug delivery systems and devices is a rapidly developing area of biomedical research and is a focus area of the NIH.
Nanomedicine, an offshoot of nanotechnology, refers to highly specific medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing disease or repairing damaged tissues, such as bone, muscle or nerve. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, too small to be seen with a conventional lab microscope. It is at this size scale – about 100 nanometers or less – that biological molecules and structures inside the living cells operate. Nanomedicine presents many revolutionary opportunities in the fight against all types of cancer, neurodegenerative disorders and other diseases.
The CDDN evolved from work in UNMC’s College of Pharmacy in the early 1990s in the area of drug delivery. Since then, there have been numerous collaborations between scientists in the College of Pharmacy and other academic units in the university system, particularly in the areas of cancer and neuorosciences. Within the past year, UNMC and UNL have added faculty members working in the nanomedicine field.
The CDDN is in a unique position to evolve as a significant contributor to the national research effort by exploring novel therapeutic delivery systems for cancer and degenerative disorders, Dr. Kabanov said. “Therapeutic and diagnostic modalities developed by the center may be translated to human use,” Dr. Kabanov said. “These efforts have a clear potential to achieve practical implementation in the short term and result in clinical benefits that will ultimately improve the health of Nebraskans and the society at large.”
The center will coordinate intra- and cross-campus efforts in UNMC’s College of Pharmacy, College of Medicine, Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases and UNL’s College of Engineering and Technology. It will utilize nationally recognized research in basic and applied sciences in biopharmaceutical engineering, cancer research, drug delivery, nanoscale sciences and engineering, neurovirology and neurodegenerative disorders, and tissue engineering.
Creation of the center will provide a formal infrastructure to share intellectual and technical resources and significantly enhance the chances for success, Dr. Kabanov said.