Three Southern Illinois University Edwardsville faculty members are participating in a $1.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to improve the quality of life for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
The title of the grant is Transplatin: A Novel Agent to Mitigate Cisplatin Toxicity. The five-year grant began in July 2013 and runs through June 2018.
The drug cisplatin is frequently used to treat breast cancer. The team is exploring if the isomer, transplatin, can diminish or eliminate certain side effects, particularly hearing loss, associated with treatment.
The primary investigator is Vickram Ramkumar, Ph.D., associate professor of pharmacology at the SIU School of Medicine in Springfield. Other SIU School of Medicine collaborators include Leonard Rybak, M.D.; Debbie Mukherjea, Ph.D.; Theresa Liberati, Ph.D. DVM; and Steve Verhulst, Ph.D.
The three SIUE team members include two from the School of Pharmacy, Tim McPherson, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences and Bill Kolling, Ph.D., associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences. Ed Navarre, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, rounds out the team.
“Tim and Ed have developed an analytical technique using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP/MS) to measure the concentration of platinum in serum,” said Kolling, noting that the instrument is housed in the Department of Chemistry.
“Initially, we will be using a rat model to study dosing and the potential for a protective response,” Kolling said. “If the data is promising, then human studies will most likely follow.”
“We will try to apply mathematical models that describe how the concentration of transplatin changes with respect to time after dosing.”