Customized nanotechnology based treatment of Oral Cancer

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): According to the Oral Cancer (OC) Foundation, oral and pharyngeal cancer will cause 8,000 deaths this year, killing roughly one person per hour. Currently, cisplatin (CIS) is at the forefront of platinum- based chemotherapeutics for treating OC. However, its efficacy is often hindered by its significant systemic toxicity as a result of traditional bolus systemic intravenous (IV) doses. In this proposal, Privo's specific aims focus on developing and optimizing an effective and safe nano engineered drug delivery platform, i.e., chemo-wafer (CW) that reformulates a known anticancer chemotherapy agent ( e.g. cisplatin) for the local and topical treatment of OC, thus replacing injection, increasing the drug's efficacy and significantly reducing its systemic toxicity. The CW platform contains FDA approved chemotherapy drugs and generally recognized as safe (GRAS) materials. It utilizes nano-encapsulation techniques to incorporate drugs into NPs with a controlled-release d