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In this episode, Ran Li, PhD, and Daniel Heller, PhD, discuss new advances in using nanoparticles to deliver drugs to cancer cells.\n\nDr. Li was recently the first author of a paper in Nature Nanotech that described how cancer cells could be tricked into thinking they\u2019re starved for nutrients, causing them to increase consumption of a cancer drug attached to the protein, albumin. \n\nDr. Heller published a review earlier this year that \u201chighlights recent progress in precision therapeutics and drug delivery, and identifies opportunities for strategies to improve the therapeutic index of cancer drugs and, consequently, clinical outcomes.\u201d\n\nRan Li, PhD, is an American Cancer Society \u2013 Ellison Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.\n\nDaniel Heller, PhD, is Associate Member at Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee, having received a Postdoctoral Fellowship and Research Scholar Grant.\n\n0:58 \u2013 Dr. Li describes new findings published in Nature Nanotech, \u201cTherapeutically reprogrammed nutrient signalling enhances nanoparticulate albumin bound drug uptake and efficacy in KRAS-mutant cancer:\u201d https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-021-00897-1 \n\n3:12 \u2013 Dr. Heller notes that \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of this paper and had my lab do a journal club on this,\u201d and explains what he found exciting about it\n\n5:46 \u2013KRAS mutant cells are \u201cravenously thirsty,\u201d making them susceptible to the approach taken by Dr. Li: \u201cBy tricking the cancer cells into thinking that they\u2019ve been starved, they do more macropinocytosis, thereby taking more albumin-bound drug\u201d\n\n9:32 \u2013 \u201cDo you think this could change how people use and prescribe this drug?\u201d\n\n11:50 \u2013 Dr. Heller shares some of the challenges and opportunities associated with nanoparticle drug delivery outlined in his review from earlier this year on targeted drug delivery strategies for precision medicines\n\n16:34 \u2013 Dr. Li reacts\u2026\n\n18:29 \u2013 \u2026and then asks, \u201cWhat do you think a major hurdle is to bringing these novel drug delivery materials and technologies into the clinic?\u201d\n\n21:49 \u2013 On improvements that need to be made to nanomaterials in order to enhance precision medicine