In 2005, Carolina physicist Jianping Lu noticed that his 5-year-old son was having trouble breathing. He took him to a local doctor, who ordered a CT scan to see what might be happening inside the boy’s lungs. The resulting picture wasn’t clear enough for the doctor to give them a diagnosis, and because they’d discussed a potential and risky surgery to fix the problem, Lu got a second opinion.
“The second CT scan was slightly better,” he remembers. “The doctor said maybe we should wait a couple years, and he may grow out of it.”
Luckily, that’s exactly what happened, and his son’s condition improved. But the experience showed Lu why the research he was doing at the time with UNC-Chapel Hill materials scientist Otto Zhou was so important.
Reply
William Zamboni, PharmD, PhD
Sha Chang, PhD
New Brunswick, N.J., May 26, 2021 – In the world of cancer therapies, nanoparticles hold great promise for delivering more effective and safer cancer treatment than the standard small molecule drugs that are commonly used today.
William Zamboni, PharmD, PhD, an expert in the pharmacology of nanoparticles at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Sha Chang, PhD, director of medical physics research at UNC, and Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey Director Steven K. Libutti, MD, FACS, whose work involves understanding the tumor microenvironment, are hoping to fight pancreatic cancer using the combination of a novel type of radiation and nanoparticles. The work is supported by a $2,792,913 grant (1R01CA247652-01A1) from the National Institutes of Health s National Cancer Institute.