Cancer causes 7 million deaths a year, or 12.5 percent of deaths worldwide. In the United States, cancer is responsible for 25 percent of all deaths. Current therapies for cancer, including radiation and chemotherapy, are destructive to the body, often causing negative side effects and additional health problems. What if you could simultaneously detect, image and treat malignant cells, and monitor efficacy of the treatment inside the body?
Researchers at INBT are working to develop nanoscale devices that detect cancer cells, report relevant diagnostic information, and deliver chemotherapeutic agents or therapeutic genes directly into the malignant cells. Targeting these devices to only interact with cancerous cells would spare healthy cells, greatly reducing or eliminating side effects that accompany many current cancer therapies. Also, simultaneous imaging and molecular profiling would allow non-invasive monitoring of tumors and treatment efficacy, resulting in better and faster patient care.

Approximately 100,000 children and adults worldwide are diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a fatal genetic disease that is potentially under-diagnosed in many populations outside of Europe and the United States. Antibiotics treat infections caused by the disease and expectorants allow clearing the airways of mucus that makes it difficult to breathe, but no cure is available. Life expectancy in the United States, where there are at least 30,000 individuals with cystic fibrosis, is 30 years old.
The DNA sequence that could cure cystic fibrosis was discovered years ago, but a successful therapy has not yet been developed. The challenge lies in designing a therapeutic DNA carrier that can reach cells affected by the disease, since cells in the airway are coated with a mucus barrier that makes delivery difficult.
Researchers at INBT are working to develop and test a successful gene therapy that cures cystic fibrosis. The five-year goal is to create nanoparticle carriers with recognition and binding properties that can overcome the mucus barrier and attach therapeutic genes to lung cells. The ten-year goal is to complete clinical trials of the first successful gene therapy for cystic fibrosis patients at Johns Hopkins.

Nanotechnology is being used to create new materials – including nanoparticles, nanotubes, and nanowires, – with dramatically altered properties useful for medical applications in drug delivery, diagnostics, and therapeutics. However, relatively little is known about the impact of these new materials on health and the environment due to limited direct toxicological studies. INBT plans to assume a leading role in the developing field of nanotoxicology research.
Johns Hopkins University is uniquely positioned to make advances in this field because of its exceptional strengths in fundamental nanoscience and its large research and training efforts in medicine, pharmacology, environmental science, occupational health, and public health. Over the next 5 to 10 years, INBT will advance understanding on the health implications of nanotechnology through studies on environmental transport, transformations, and fate, exposure, toxicology, and epidemiology.