DETROIT – David Oupicky, Ph.D., is prepared to engineer “smart” porous nanoparticles for targeted delivery of cancer fighting drugs into prostate tumors. The process may lead to treatments for a wide variety of other types of cancer, according to Dr. Oupicky, associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Wayne State University.

Dr. Oupicky, along with fellow project collaborators Stephanie Brock, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Chemistry, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Shijie Sheng, Ph.D., Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, received $403,000 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health for their proposal, “Hollow Porous Silica Nanoparticles for Targeted Drug Delivery.”

“We anticipate that the novel nanoparticles developed in this project will establish a new drug delivery platform suitable for a variety of biomedical applications,” said Dr. Oupicky of Canton, Michigan. “The design flexibility of these hybrid inorganic-organic nanoparticles is particularly suitable for imaging and drug delivery. Early application to a clinically relevant problem will allow fast progression of this nanotechnology platform to application in cancer treatment.”

Dr. Oupicky’s success can be directly tied to a special internal funding program from a Wayne State University President’s Research Enhancement initiative that emphasized nanotechnology research at the university. In 2005, Drs. Oupicky and Brock were grant recipients of this program, and their continued achievement with “smart” porous nanoparticles exemplifies the impact of WSU’s research dedication.

“It shows that these internal funding programs work, and we’re grateful for them,” said Dr. Oupicky.

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world.