Professor Sandvig heads a national nanoparticle project: Grant of 30 million NOK over 5 years
Professor Kirsten Sandvig at the Department of Biochemistry and Centre for Cancer Biomedicine at The Institute for Cancer Research, OUH, has received a grant of 30 million NOK over a 5 year period for the project “Biodegradable Nanoparticles in Cancer Diagnosis and Therapy”. This grant is part of an initiative of The Research Council of Norway to enhance the national knowledgebase of nanotechnology. A total of five projects are awarded such grants. The project headed by Sandvig is the only project within the field of biomedicine. A main goal of the project is to build the necessary competence for developing safe and efficient nanoparticles for diagnosis and personalized therapy of cancer.
Groups from academia, research institutes, university hospitals and pharmaceutical industry are involved with a focus on cross-functional collaborations. Thus, the project involves partners from SINTEF (Oslo and Trondheim), University of Tromsø and industry to deliver nanoparticles. Uptake, intracellular transport and degradation of the nanoparticles in cells will be studied in the group of Sandvig, whereas testing for immunological responses to the particles will be performed by professors Anders Sundan and Terje Espevik at NTNU.
The most promising nanoparticles will be tested in mice (xenograft models). These activities will be headed by Professor Gunhild Mælandsmo, The Department of Tumour Biology, Institute for Cancer Research, OUH. In vivo imaging will be carried out by a consortium of imaging experts at OUH in collaboration with the MR group at NTNU; the imaging activities will be headed by Dr. Therese Seierstad, OUH. The project also includes one clinical activity in collaboration with Dr. Gunnar Kvalheim, Department of Cellular Therapy, OUH. Dendritic cells will be labelled with iron-oxide based nanoparticles and MR imaging will be used to see if these cells migrate to the lymph nodes following intradermal injection (migration will be correlated with immune response and clinical outcome).
The project management group will consist of Sandvig and two senior scientists in her research group: Dr. Tore-Geir Iversen will coordinate the in vitro activities and Dr. Tore Skotland will coordinate the in vivo activities.
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| Some of the key persons in the project. In front from the left: Therese Seierstad, Kirsten Sandvig and Gunhild Mælandsmo. In the back from the left: Tore Skotland, Gunnar Kvalheim and Tore-Geir Iversen. |
Links:
News article in Norwegian from OUS home page:
Forskningsrådet gir 30 millioner til nytt nanopartikkel-prosjekt
News article from Norwegian health/medicine newspaper "Dagens Medisin":
Nano-prosjekt får 30 millioner
About NANO2021 from the home page of the Norwegian Research Council:
Bevilgning til fem nasjonalt koordinerte prosjekter
NANO2021 home page (in English)
Tore-Geir iversen's project group