Groundbreaking treatments like targeted cancer therapies and mRNA-based vaccines would not have been possible without almost five decades of fundamental research led by Dr. Pieter Cullis, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the UBC faculty of medicine. It all started with scientific curiosity and tiny bubbles of fat.
In the late 1970s, Dr. Cullis and UBC colleagues began studying the basic components of the fats that make up the membranes around our cells with funding from what is now the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He used these components to create lipid nanoparticles—tiny biological envelopes that could deliver medication into our bodies.
At the time, 99.9 per cent of chemotherapy drugs caused toxic side effects and only a small amount would reach cancer cells. Clinical trials showed that cancer drugs delivered through lipid nanoparticles targeted the tumour more directly and caused fewer side effects.
These results led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medical Agency to the approve two lipid nanoparticle-based drugs, Myocet and Marqibo, which are used to treat breast cancer and lymphoblastic leukemia. Today, many cancer drugs still use this method.
