Endometrial cancer (EC) is the sixth most common cancer in women worldwide and is the most common cancer of female reproductive organs with a rising incidence rate of 1.3% from 2007-2016. Typically, EC is treated with surgery, but at later stages surgery is less effective requiring treatment from a very short list of FDA approved chemotherapies and/or radiation therapy. The minuscule amount of effective treatment options as well as an increase in incidence shows the need for creating improved treatments for EC. Chemotherapeutic loaded micro- and nano-sized polymeric particles make great drug delivery systems due to decreasing side effects and increasing bioavailability, circulation time, and accumulation of the drug in the tumor. Our laboratory has developed a chemotherapeutic loaded polymeric particle. We have optimized preparation methods for particle size (AAPS J) and continue to work towards optimizing loading and release (pre-publication). Furthermore, we investigate the efficacy of these particles in a variety of endometrial cancer cell lines to determine if encapsulation is an effective method for cancer therapeutics (pre-publication).
Dr. Brittany Givens is an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh where she conducted research on nanotoxicity of catalytic nanoparticles. She received her M.S. and Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from the University of Iowa where her work focused on protein corona formation and enhancing drug and gene delivery with polymeric materials, respectively. She completed a T32 Fellowship in Cancer Biology in the Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky prior to beginning her faculty position in 2020. She is deeply invested in using Chemical Engineering to solve healthcare challenges, such as endometrial cancer mortality rates. Her current work uses drug delivery for endometrial cancer as a focal point for novel drug delivery systems to improve endometrial cancer survival.