After 14 months, there is a 70-80 per cent risk that non-small cell lung cancer, one of the two primary types of lung cancer, would become resistant to the pharmacological therapy that was initially used to treat it. There aren't many existing therapy alternatives if it occurs.

Raghuraman Kannan, who holds the Michael J. and Sharon R. Bukstein Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, is committed to discovering a cure. "We want to find out why patients are becoming resistant to the therapeutic agent and determine how we can help them overcome that challenge," he said.

The team previously discovered two genes implicated in the emergence of this drug resistance. Researchers will now be able to test the strategy they created to combat resistance with the aid of this award.

Kannan explained that their strategy combines protein-based nanoparticles with RNA interference (RNAi), a biological mechanism. The RNA will be safely delivered to the malignant tumour by the nanoparticles, which will also halt the resistance. In turn, this will make the malignancy more susceptible to the effects of the first pharmacological therapy.

"Through RNAi, we have something called a silencing RNA (siRNA)," he said. "As the name suggests, it silences the gene of interest, which in this case are the two genes causing this drug resistance. But siRNAs are inherently unstable in blood. So, we must develop a technology to deliver this siRNA to the [cancer] tumour. That's where the nanoparticle comes in."

Similar nanoparticle-based drug delivery techniques have been developed by Kannan to create therapies for ovarian, breast, pancreatic, and liver malignancies.

He possesses seven patents and has authored more than 55 articles. He stated that his ultimate goal is to increase the work's accessibility so that physicians can use it to assist more people.