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Professor Shirley Wu of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy has received a Connaught Innovation Award to support her team’s work to develop an innovative nanotechnology-based platform for central nervous system diseases.

“Financial support to move this research forward is critical. There’s very little external funding for this type of work, so this internal funding is pivotal to move forward,” says Wu. “You need a bridge like this to move from discovery to commercialization, and we appreciate this opportunity very much.”

Wu’s research focuses on drug delivery and pharmaceutical nanotechnology. Her team’s nanoparticulate system can cross the blood-brain barrier – a protective structure that surrounds the brain – to deliver drugs or imaging agents. The platform has already been used to deliver drugs in an animal model of breast cancer brain metastasis and primary brain tumours, as well as to deliver an imaging agent for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.

The technology is particularly exciting from a commercialization perspective because it serves as a platform that can be loaded with different agents to image or treat different central nervous diseases.

“We want to move forward and develop the technology for different applications, but the manufacturing process is the main bottleneck right now,” says Wu. “The Connaught Innovation Award will help us to overcome some of the barriers and prepare for commercialization.”