Designing Ligand-Targeted Drugs for Treatment of Cancers, Autoimmune, Infectious & Fibrotic Diseases
- Exploring the use of small molecule targeting ligands to deliver attached drugs specifically to diseased cells, thereby improving their potencies and avoiding the unwanted toxicities that occur when they accumulate in healthy cells
- For this purpose, we have designed targeting ligands that are highly specific for distinct cancers, different autoimmune disorders, multiple fibrotic diseases, viruses and virus-infected cells, dysregulated immune cells, bone fractures, metabolically aberrant normal cells (e.g. hepatocytes, adipocytes, etc.) and several other cell types
- Applications of these targeting ligands to the design of precision medicines for imaging and therapy of many diseases will be summarized. Although three FDA-approved drugs from my lab will be briefly mentioned, most of the seminar will be devoted to the design of new drugs about to enter or already undergoing human clinical trials