The TARGETED technology exploits the ability of the human ferritin nanocage to entrap different type of chemotherapeutic drug and to deliver them to specific cancer sites reducing drastically non-specific side effects as well as increasing efficacy. The cavity entraps the drug (or drugs) and provides protection to the load from the external environment over its blood circulation to reach the cancer cell.
The enginereed ferritin-based system is designed to be relatively inactive versus non-cancer cells during blood circulation, and subsequently can be activated by multiple proteases in the tumor microenvironment where the therapeutic cargo must be released. In this way, damage to healthy cells is limited and ability to kill cancer cells is increased.