Multifunctional Immunocompatible Nanotheranostics particles for pancreatic cancer

Recent advances in bionanotechnology have paved the way for new tumour treatments, based on the use of nanoconstructs whose properties have been proved to kill cancer cells, throughout a series of different mechanisms of interaction in biological processes. Tuning their properties in order to better understand these mechanisms could improve the chances of treating all those tumours that show little response to standard therapies. Among all types of cancers, pancreatic cancer is nowadays one of the most difficult to be diagnosed, due to the lack of visible symptoms at early stages, and to be treated when it is spread throughout the body. Its tumour microenvironment shows chemoresistance and causes hypoxia, thus reducing the chances for drugs to reach and successfully treat the tumour site. The aim of the current MINT project, in which this Master thesis is included, is the development a theranostic and immunocompatible tumour targeted nanoconstructs with enhanced drug delivery capabilities to cancer cells, in order to disturb the microenvironment supporting the pancreatic cancer and to work as magnetic resonance contrast agent.