Avi Schroeder, PhD, Professor

The Schroeder lab aims to improve patients’ quality of life and treatment by developing innovative medical technologies. Specifically, we focus on targeted drug delivery systems to treat brain neurodegenerative diseases.

Our nanotechnology is designed according to the loaded drug (proteins, gene delivery, and small molecules) and to the brain-targeting region. We also utilize our technology to treat various metastatic cancer types and inflammations and combine it with synthetic biology to develop artificial cells for therapeutic applications. Our lab is headed by Prof. Avi Schroeder, who has years of experience in nanotechnology and personalized medicine technologies.

Our lab’s cancer related research areas are:

Personalized Cancer Treatment- Selecting a proper therapeutic that will address each patient’s unique disease presentation, can significantly improve the treatment outcome. Patient-specific biomarkers have helped to advance personalized medicine; however, much remains unknown when predicting whether a certain patient will or will not respond to therapy.

In our lab, a nanoparticle-based technology for predicting the therapeutic potency of drugs is developed. Once a tumor is detected, a cocktail of DNA-barcoded nanoparticles, each containing a different drug, is injected intravenously. The particles accumulate in the various cells that compose the tumor microenvironment, utilizing the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect.

After enabling each of the drugs to take action, a biopsy is taken from the tumor and the tissue is homogenized, to form a single-cell suspension. After sorting the cells according to cell type and to their live/dead viability state (potency screen), the DNA barcodes are extracted from the cells and the cell viability data is correlated with the type of drug/s found inside each of the cells, thereby identifying which drug or drug combination is optimal for treating the lesion. Based on the screen, a treatment protocol can be selected for the patient. This technology will improve care by personalizing the treatment course for each patient.

Targeting Tumor Microenvironment- Cancer cells need the support of other cells to progress to a tumor. Without this supporting environment, the so-called tumor microenvironment, cancer cells cannot grow. Currently, most treatment strategies focus on killing the cancer cells.

Our approach is to treat and target the supportive environment. We believe that combined targeting of the microenvironment and the tumor cells can enhance disease control and patient survival. We are designing liposomes that can carry both chemotherapeutic agents, which kill the cancer cells, and other small molecules that are aimed to attack the microenvironment. Specifically, we design Liposomes that interfere with primary metabolic processes of the tumor microenvironment, including acidification, by delivering alkaline buffers to the tumor.

Targeting Metastasis- Despite advances in cancer therapy, treating cancer after it has metastasized remains an unmet clinical challenge. Common therapeutic options become limited when dealing with metastases. Specifically, nanotechnologies that are targeted simultaneously to multiple metastatic sites in the body while carrying small-molecule drugs, proteins, nucleic acids or imaging agents, will enable management of metastatic cancer.

In our lab, we assessed the ability of liposomal nanoparticles to target triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) metastases in vivo. We studied the effect of several disease conditions on nanoparticle accumulation at the metastatic site, including the size of the metastases, the presence or absence of a primary tumor alongside the metastases, and the size of the metastatic lesion.

Nanoparticles may also be found in elevated levels in the pre-metastatic niche, several days before metastases are visualized by MRI or histologically in the tissue. This highlights the promise of diagnostic and therapeutic nanoparticles for treating metastatic cancer, possibly even for preventing the onset of the metastatic dissemination by targeting the pre-metastatic niche.