That is fine, thank you.
I would first like to thank the members of the committee for inviting me to present part of my research work that, as you can see, is geared to the construction of bio-inspired nanostructures designed to kill bacterial or cancer cells.
I am a chemist and I thank
...Dr. Chan for the beautiful introduction...
on nanotechnology. So I won't have to redo it.
As chemists, we build molecules from scratch. We want to build nanoscale molecules to kill bacterial and cancer cells.
Why do we want to do that? Right now, the greatest threat on the planet—and Dr. Plummer talked about it at length—is that there are more and more bacteria resistant to current chemotherapy. An increasing number of cancers are resistant to the drugs currently being used in clinical settings. If we do not come up with new developments and discover new therapeutic agents with new modes of action, we are going to have a serious problem on our hands in coming years. It will be more difficult to counteract bacterial infections, viral infections and infections of all sorts, in addition to the problems with increasingly resistant cancers.
My area of research is promising in that respect. The new solution to combatting this scourge is called nanochemotherapeutics. As Dr. Chan said, when you develop nanoscale substances, their physical, chemical and biological properties are completely different from compounds that do not have nanometre dimensions.
Nature has been using nanotechnology for hundreds of thousands of years because it develops viruses, which are real nanorobots, as well as nanoscale toxins and proteins that have incredible properties. One of those properties is to alter the membrane of our good cells, which causes a great level of toxicity.
To better understand my area of research, you need to try and imagine that every human being is made up of billions of small cells. Bacteria are unicellular organisms, but humans have billions. The integrity of those cells is maintained by what is known as the cell membrane. It is a thin little layer, a type of Saran Wrap that keeps the cell intact. So when you manage to puncture the membrane of cancer cells or bacterial cells, they die. As a result, some toxins and substances secreted by the bacteria are able to break this membrane and kill cells.
At our lab at Laval University, our approach is to try to mimic these proteins, to design and synthesize nanostructures or nanoscale compounds that have the properties to mimic natural toxins that attack and puncture the membranes. We want to target the cells that need to be destroyed, meaning the cancer cells and bacterial cells that are increasingly resistant.
The benefit of using this technique is that it will bring us one day to a group of nanochemotherapeutic agents, as an extension of today’s conventional chemotherapeutics. These tools will potentially be universal therapeutic agents for all bacteria and viruses since their mode of action is innovative. Actually, this type of mechanism will induce no resistance.
As an example, let me show you a prototype. As our inspiration, you see a protein on the left with green bows and small purple bubbles. This protein is secreted by bacteria and it is a toxin that destroys the red blood cells. If you are infected by the bacteria and this toxin is in your blood, it will destroy your red blood cells and you will die.
We have used this protein as an inspiration to create—as you can see on the right—nanostructures, three to four nanometres in size, that will be able to puncture the membrane of undesirable cancer cells. To date, we have managed to show their activity in killing cancer cells, as well as bacteria.
In the next slide, I am showing you a short film. You can see the same nanostructure going through a blood vessel. You see the red blood cells in the background. At the bottom you see the start of a leukemia cancer cell. The nanostructure will detect the presence of this cancer cell. Next, it will incorporate itself into the cell membrane to create a port that will allow excess sodium ions to enter. In so doing, the sodium ions will disrupt the internal biochemistry of the cancer cell. The cancer cell will die by itself through a mechanism called apoptosis. I will not get into the details, but it is a mechanical process that makes it possible to puncture the membrane of the cancer cell, thereby killing it.
Clearly, this is not going to happen overnight. How long do we think it will take until this type of nanostructure can be used clinically? We are talking about approximately 10 to 20 years. Right now, we are talking about very rudimentary trials. Work needs to be done. We need to prepare analogs, to gain a full understanding of how the mechanism of action works and to improve selectivity in killing undesirable cells, not the healthy cells in our bodies. We also have to determine the safety profile, the therapeutic dose, the efficacy and so on.
Why should the Government of Canada support this type of work? Nanomedicine, which includes nanodiagnostics—that was talked about at great length earlier—and nanotherapeutics, involves technologies with huge potential that can revolutionize the way we diagnose and treat patients. That will facilitate very early diagnosis, meaning
bedside monitoring, point of care.
Clearly, it will also lower healthcare costs and improve quality of life.
But the main reason why the government must fund this work, which is too risky for the industry, is so that, one day, we will be able to see our research work come to fruition in Canada. Actually, the industry does not have the money needed to study and develop technologies that will reach their full potential in 10 to 20 years. That will be very expensive and the industry does not have those types of resources. It is up to university researchers and those who conduct basic research in universities to develop those new approaches. Subsequently, companies will be able to build on them and develop concrete applications.
I would like to conclude by thanking granting agencies, specifically NSERC, which has always supported my research work.
I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.