Pappanaicken Kumaresan

Current Projects:

- On demand cleavable linkers in radioimmunotherapy: The therapeutic potential of radioimmunotherapy is greatly limited due to exposure of radiation to vital organs such as liver, kidney and heart. The therapeutic potential can be increased several fold by removal of circulating radioimmunoconjugates from the blood stream after tumor uptake. In this proposal it has been hypothesized that on demand cleavable linker will be introduced between the cancer targeting agent and radiometal and it can be cleaved by administering external cleaving agent on demand.

- Identifying pancreatic cancer specific molecular targets: Pancreatic cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer related death in United States accounting for 600 patients/year. In this proposal,it has been proposed to identify pancreatic cancer specific ligands by screening various peptide and small molecule combinatorial libraries.

- Chemical microarray to determine protease profile in cancer patients: Various proteases are secreted by cancer cells during growth especially in malignant and metastatic stages. It could be used as a potential diagnostic marker for cancer diagnosis. In this study chemical microarrays will be prepared by spotting the various protease substrates on the slide and determining the protease profile by incubating with serum from cancer patients.