The development and characterisation of MicroRNA and gemcitabine nanotherapies for the treatment of pancreatic cancer

Especially with the failure to improve survival rates for the last 40 years, despite all the progress in targeting therapies. With the lack of therapeutic options, attention has been directed towards innovative platforms in a bid to overcome the resistant and aggressive nature of the disease.<br><br>Micro-RNAs are endogenous small, non-coding RNAs considered to be post-translational regulators for the expression of targeted genes.

The utilization of miRNAs as therapeutic agents has showed promising rapid progress in the last 10 years but are limited because of the lack of appropriate delivery systems that will ensure reach of the pharmacological targets. On the other hand, the bottleneck with using gemcitabine, the first line chemotherapeutic agent, is the rapidly developing resistance coupled with low bioavailability.<br><br>The aim of this project is to elucidate the potential role of miR-143, miR-145 and gemcitabine triphosphate in the treatment of pancreatic cancer when delivered in fusogenic peptide-based nanoparticles. <br><br>To date, results have shown that the fully characterised nanoparticles can transfect pancreatic cell lines with efficient delivery of the cargo intracellularly, as detected by FACS and qRT-PCR analysis.