Prof. Rachela Popovtzer Awarded Proof of Concept Grant for Tumor Therapy
Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, of the BIU Kofkin Faculty of Engineering and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, was recognized for innovative treatment for solid tumors.
Prof. Popovtzer, of Bar-Ilan University’s Kofkin Faculty of Engineering and the university’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, designed insulin-coated gold nanoparticles to serve as a novel antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) nanoplatform. The Golden-ADC nanoplatform overcomes crucial challenges of existing ADCs, through its simple design, straightforward binding of multiple drugs and antibodies, and its ability to surmount biological barriers, which greatly improves the delivery of the drug to the tumor.
“Within the Golden-ADC project, we aim to achieve significant progress in the technology development, by Proof of Concept demonstration of efficacy and safety in triple-negative breast cancer models,” says Prof. Popovtzer.
In March 2022, Prof. Popovtzer received the ERC Consolidator Grant for her pioneering research project, BrainCRISPR, which proposes an innovative gold nanoplatform for delivering CRISPR biomolecules into the brain to cure rare genetic brain diseases.
The Proof of Concept grant funds researchers previously or currently supported by the ERC, enabling them to advance their ideas from groundbreaking research towards innovation. The grant, worth €150,000, assists researchers in transitioning from frontier research discoveries to practical applications of the findings, including early commercialization phases.