The project

Monday March 8th, 2021

Who are we?
We are a research group headed by Professor Livia Visai at the Department of Molecular Medicine of Pavia’s University. The researches performed in our laboratory are focused on the biotechnology of the very small, the nanobiotechnologies, to obtain innovative therapeutic solutions for the treatment of cancer, bacterial infections and tissue regeneration, as documented by our scientific publications.

Where did we start? The 2015 crowdfunding campaign and its results
In 2015 our project titled “Breast Cancer: Defeating It with Smart Gold Nanospheres” was funded through the Universitiamo crowdfunding platform. The aim of the project was to use a nanobiotechnology-based approach to develop a new biocompatible drug-loaded gold nanocarrier selective for cancer cells, with the purpose of improving the effectiveness and the selectivity of chemotherapy treatment of breast cancer.
Thanks to the funds raised and the prestigious support of research grants for young researchers of the Umberto Veronesi Foundation, the project has obtained important scientific results, already presented to the scientific community in the form of publications ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32195232/), oral presentations and posters at several national and international conferences.
In addition, thanks to the numerous activities organized, the project worked towards raising social awareness about the nanobiotechnology as new approach to breast cancer treatment.

What are the goals of this new crowdfunding campaign?

Through this new campaign we would like to continue to fund our research to assess the effectiveness of our gold nanoparticles against breast cancer, the most common invasive cancer in women all over the world. In addition, we are keen to develop gold nanosystems to treat bone metastases, which are the common sites of metastasis for breast cancer.

Conventional approaches to cancer therapy, although they are effective at killing cancer cells, may still fail due to inadequate biodistribution and unwanted side effects. Nanobiotechnology approach has the potential to revolutionize the diagnosis and therapy of tumors. These approaches provide a promising alternative, with the possibility of targeting cells at an early stage, during their transformation into cancer cells, and of decreasing the dose of the administered medication, improving the quality of life of the patient.

In particular, the funds raised through this campaign will be used to:

– assess the biocompatibility, toxicity, efficacy, and interaction of our gold nanospheres in 3D scaffold models in compliance with the 3Rs principles for more ethical use of animals in testing. Advances in 3D scaffold models are excellent tools to recapitulate important tumor features including cellular heterogeneity, cell signaling pathways, gene expression patterns similar to those of in vivo conditions.
– synthetize bone-targeted gold nanoparticles functionalized with bone-targeting molecules to treat breast cancer bone metastasis while promoting the regeneration of damaged tissue.

The project will benefit from the ongoing collaboration with national and international research groups, with a constant look at strengthening the collaboration with patient organizations and with those ones engaged in dissemination projects.

Why support us?

Our project may help to develop alternative therapy or support existing therapies, thus improving the quality of life of the patient.

We will organize a series of interactive webinars where we will talk about our project and meet other researchers actively involved in the fight against breast cancer!