July 17, 2024
The Office of Global Health at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) supports globally engaged faculty through research seed funding. This competitive funding is based on the principles of global engagement: credibility, health equity, multidisciplinary, reciprocal, social justice, and sustainability.
For the fiscal year 2025, eight faculty members have been awarded $5,000 each to foster new global research collaborations. Among the recipients, Dr. Amit Joshi, a professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, has received funding for his project "From Farm to Clinic: Silk Nanoparticles for Multimodal Imaging and Therapy of Breast Cancer," in collaboration with Dr. Sharad Gupta from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore in Madhya Pradesh, India.
This innovative partnership aims to develop and test new silk-based nanoparticles loaded with chemotherapy drugs for treating triple-negative breast cancer. Silk traditionally used in India for textiles and medicine is now being repurposed for advanced medical treatments. Despite the high value of silk fabric, the farmers and weavers who produce silk often do not receive fair compensation. To address this, Dr. Gupta has created biodegradable and biocompatible silk fibroin-based nanoparticles that contain the FDA-approved near-infrared dye Indocyanine Green (ICG) and the chemotherapeutic drug Doxorubicin. These nanoparticles are designed for imaging and treating solid tumors and have the potential to be used for various types of cancer.
Dr. Joshi will lead the MCW leg of the project, focusing on the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of these nanoparticles in animal models. This will involve both whole-body and cellular-level studies using advanced imaging techniques. Dr. Gupta will produce the nanoparticles and send them to Dr. Joshi's lab for detailed analysis and testing.
This project will deliver a detailed description of the innovative process used to create uniform silk nanoparticles. It will also generate support applications for larger grants in efforts translate this technology to clinical use for advanced breast cancer patients. Additionally, this project will benefit the rural silk farming community near IIT Indore by purchasing raw silk directly from local farmers.
Dr. Joshi is the Director and Principal Investigator of the Nanomedicine & Image-Guided Interventions Laboratory (NIGIL) in the Marquette-MCW Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Ongoing research in his lab includes developing minimally invasive and non-toxic diagnostic and therapeutic technologies targeting cancer, pulmonary and infectious diseases, and other vascular conditions. Dr. Sharad Gupta is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the IIT Indore and specializes in optics, nanotechnology and biomaterials.
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