María Blanco, professor at the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition, has been one of the invited speakers at a workshop on nanomedicines jointly organized by the French Academy of Sciences and the French National Academy of Pharmacy, of which she is a foreign corresponding member. The scientific meeting took place in Paris on October 16 and was attended by internationally renowned experts in the field of nanomedicine.

During her talk, Professor Blanco discussed the therapeutic applications of nanodrugs and the potential interest in their use in pediatrics, specifically in the treatment of pediatric cancer. "Cancer remains the leading cause of childhood death from disease in developed countries. The prospects for treating cancer in children are not very encouraging when compared with the treatment of the disease in adults," he explains. Among the therapeutic options for treating pediatric cancer, chemotherapy is the last chance for children with a poor prognosis, and although the antitumor efficacy of common cytostatic drugs is sufficiently proven, their clinical use carries a risk of toxicity that is increased in the pediatric population. Consequently, in the case of pediatric cancers, the search for new therapeutic strategies to treat the disease is particularly important.

In this context, nanomedicines have emerged as new therapeutic options, especially for high-risk or relapsed patients due to their resistance to conventional anticancer drugs. "During my discussion paper, I showed how nanosystems are able to increase the therapeutic index of the drugs they carry and to improve drug delivery to the tumor. In addition, by reducing toxicity, nanomedicine allows higher doses to be used, contributing to more effective treatment and improved quality of life for these children."