Targeted treatments for brain tumours: Associating specific drug transporter expression in patient tumours with their respective drug carrier molecules to deliver anticancer therapeutics.
Each year, over 1200 New Zealanders are diagnosed with primary brain tumours, and 1 in 4 cancer patients develop secondary tumour metastases to the brain. Both forms often have poor prognoses, primarily due to the limited permeability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to effective anticancer agents. To address this, we developed a BBB-crossing drug carrier system that leverages organic anion transporting polypeptides (OATPs), which are upregulated in the tumour vasculature and cells, to deliver anticancer agents to glioblastoma tumours - the most common primary malignant brain tumour. This project aims to investigate other common brain tumours, including brain metastases, by 1) determining the OATP subtypes expressed in these brain tumours and 2) optimising the drug carrier design for each OATP expressed in each tumour type. We anticipate that this project will broaden the potential of our drug carrier to deliver efficacious therapeutics to a greater number of brain tumour patients.