On February 15, World Childhood Cancer Day, the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition renewed the agreement signed with association NEN -association of relatives and friends of patients with neuroblastoma - to develop nanoparticles to improve treatments for this tumor, the most common in the first two years of life.

Professor María Blanco Prieto, and her team at department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology of the University of Navarra, aim to design and evaluate nanoparticles loaded with effective antitumor drugs in neuroblastoma. All of this with the ultimate goal of improving the efficacy and reducing the toxicity of conventional chemotherapy treatments, goal .

Already in 2017 the agreement between the association NEN and the University of Navarra initiated the study of new lipid nanoparticles carrying inside them the antitumor drugs gemcitabine and edelfosine.

"From what we have been able to observe so far," adds the study's manager , "the drugs maintain their antitumor activity after nanoencapsulation, which will make it possible to reduce the doses to be administered and the toxicity of the drug, a very important factor especially in children, who are particularly vulnerable patients."

The funds to develop these projects come from the "Nico against childhood cancer" campaign, under the NEN Foundation.

Professor Patrick Couvreur of the University of Paris-Sud (France) also participates in project .