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Dr. Marianna Foldvari

Novel n​anotech drug delivery

Imagine,” says Marianna Foldvari, “chicken wire rolled up into a tube.” 

That’s how a carbon nanotube would look. With a diameter of one to 50 nanometres — 1,000 times smaller than a human hair — the nanotube could be loaded with drug molecules, and implanted or injected into a patient. 

Using a homing device such as a short, small molecule able to find and bind to a matching counterpart on a cell, the delivery system could send a drug molecule to a specific target site, like a tumour, and spare the rest of the body from side effects.”

Marianna Foldvari in the lab

And that’s just the beginning. As Canada Research Chair in Bionanotechnology and Nanomedicine, and professor at Waterloo’s new School of Pharmacy, Foldvari dreams of developing even more sophisticated, more intelligent delivery systems for medication.

“A lot of drugs are not being used as efficiently as they could. We’re shooting in the dark with most of them,” she adds. The innovative targeted delivery systems she envisions would allow patients to be medicated at optimal levels, improving overall treatment.

With three companies and 14 patents to her credit, Foldvari’s lab has produced “the first example of successful protein delivery across intact human skin,” with the invention of biphasic vesicles. This delivery system uses a cream applied to the skin to deliver pharmaceuticals.

Among her projects is development of a delivery system for gene therapy.

“If we could replace or repair a defective gene, we could cure a disease,” she says.

Foldvari is focusing on delivering a gene with a template to manufacture a missing molecule for the treatment of localized scleroderma, a serious skin disease.

A recent arrival at Waterloo, Foldvari joined the pharmacy school team because she “wanted to be part of a place that is visionary and innovative, with no limits to the imagination. Waterloo is the kind of place where you can do anything you put your mind to: from basic research to commercialization of technology from an idea developed in the lab.”