Dr. Robertson focuses his research efforts on studying the cellular basis of molecules that identify certain classes of cells.
Application to Cancer Research
A major goal in cancer research is the development of systems to deliver chemotherapeutic agents directly to tumor cells and away from normal tissue. Such systems would allow lower doses of the chemotherapeutic agents, and would reduce the negative side effects resulting from impact on normal tissues.
Our work takes a novel approach towards this goal, which is to package the chemotherapeutic drug in tiny lipid spheres, called liposomes. To deliver these liposome packages selectively to cancer cells, we engineer the liposomes to have either a surface peptide or a surface antibody fragment, designed to target the glycosaminoglycan extracellular matrix molecules that characterize tumor tissue.
Glycosaminoglycans, as part of the extracellular matrix, are a common feature on the surfaces of cells, including tumor cells. Importantly, tumors exhibit a dysregulation of both the composition and level of glycosaminoglycans, compared to normal tissues; these abnormal glycosaminoglycans offer selective targets for anti-cancer delivery mechanisms.
Application to Alzheimer’s Research
Alzheimer’s is well studied, and a variety of investigations in recent years have provided detailed information about what goes wrong in Alzheimer’s disease; we just don’t know why.
Because we know that one of the major pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease is the loss of cholinergic circuits (systems that use acetylcholine as a neural transmitter), and loss of these cholinergic circuits seems somehow tied to the development of amyloid plaques in the Alzheimer brain, the Robertson laboratory is studying the normal development of these cholinergic circuits.
Perhaps by understanding the development of these brain systems, and the neurotrophic factors needed by these systems during development, we can recreate the conditions that lead to neural growth early in life and rescue these circuits when they show signs of degenerating later in life.
