2020 “Smart Strategies to Improve Cancer Nanomedicine ”

Twan Lammersobtained a D.Sc. in Radiation Oncology from Heidelberg University in 2008 and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from Utrecht University in 2009. In the same year, he started the Nanomedicine and Theranostics group at RWTH Aachen University. In 2014, he was promoted to full professor of medicine at RWTH Aachen University Clinic. His lab aims to individualize and improve disease treatment by combining drug targeting with imaging. To this end, image-guided (theranostic) drug delivery systems and tissue-engineered implants are being developed, as well as materials and methods to monitor and modulate tumor growth, angiogenesis, fibrosis, inflammation and metastasis. Lammers has published over 250 papers. His work has been cited >14000 times (h-index 66). He received multiple scholarships and awards, including a starting, a consolidator and two proof-of-concept grants from the European Research Council, the young investigator award of the Controlled Release Society (2015), the Adritelf International Pharmaceutical Sciences award (2018), and the International Award from the Belgian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences (2020). He is a member of the editorial board of 10 journals, and serves a handling editor for the Journal of Controlled Release. Since 2019, he has been included in the Clarivate Analytics list of Highly Cited Researchers.

Nanomedicines are extensively employed to improve the efficacy and reduce the toxicity of (chemo-) therapeutic drugs. In the case of cancer, nanomedicines traditionally rely on the “EPR” effect for efficient target site accumulation, which is notoriously known to be variable, both in animal models and in patients. To tackle heterogeneity in target site accumulation and to improve the performance of cancer nanomedicines, we are working on systems and strategies to monitor and modulate tumor-directed drug delivery. In the present lecture, several of these strategies will be highlighted, including pharmacological and physical priming of tumor blood vessels and the microenvironment, and theranostic concepts for individualized and improved nanomedicine treatment.

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