Download Hydrogels for bladder cancer

NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering
Research Project Write-up
Title of Project :
Hydrogels as drug delivery systems for treatment of bladder
carcinoma
Name of Supervisor :
Professor Paul C. Ho
Contact Details:
Tel. 65162651; email. [email protected]
Short Description
Bladder carcinoma is the second commonest urological carcinoma after prostate
cancer. In US, there are 72,570 new cases of bladder cancer in 2013 and causing
15.210 deaths (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/bladder). In China, there is
an increasing trend in the incidence of bladder cancer from 6.39 to 7.66 per 100,000
or 0.62% per year during the period from 1973 to 2005 according to the data from the
Shanghai Cancer Registry. According to the European Organization for Research and
Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the disease recurrence rates for non-muscle invasive
bladder cancer range from 15 to 61 % at one year, increasing to 31-78% at five years.
The gold standard treatment for bladder carcinoma is employing intravesical delivery
of mitomycin, followed by maintenance therapy with intravesical BCG or with
combined intravesical BCG and mitomycin. Nevertheless, with whatever standard
treatment today, the recurrence rate is still high, causing significant impact on
morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs. There are a number of novel delivery
systems of mitomycin and BCG reported in literatures. They were developed with
objective to sustain the effects and reduce the recurrence rates. We propose in this
study to advance the treatment of bladder carcinoma in two ways by: 1) identifying
novel treatment or treatment combination from the existing drugs; and 2) developing
novel drug delivery systems for the identified new treatment approaches. For the latter
proposal, mucoadhesive hydrogels would be our option of delivery systems for
therapeutics for the treatment of bladder carcinoma.