The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Biosciences, Health and the Environment has granted a funding of 497 191 euros to Professor Jarkko Rautio from the School Pharmacy for an Academy Project called “Boosting delivery of LAT1-targeted boron carriers for improved boron neutron capture therapy”.
Glioblastoma multiforme (glioma) is a disease of the entire brain. Both primary and metastatic brain tumours have limited treatment options and long-term survival is rare. Even in the face of aggressive treatment, brain tumour growth and recurrence are unavoidable, due mainly to ineffective delivery of therapeutic agents across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The BBB in the tumour core is "leaky", allowing systemic drug delivery, but glioma cells infiltrate normal brain structures centimetres away from the margin of surgical resection where the BBB is intact. In this project, the enhanced expression and transport capacity of large neutral amino acid transporter (LAT1) both at the BBB and in glioma cells is utilized to develop novel LAT1-targeted boron carriers for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) to be used in the treatment of gliomas.
