Deep inside a laboratory at the University of Central Florida, Dinender Singla has engineered something almost impossibly small—microscopic bubbles 500 times thinner than a human hair—that could revolutionize how we treat two of medicine's most devastating diseases. These aren't ordinary vesicles. They're exosomes, the body's own cellular messengers, repurposed as precision delivery vehicles for cancer-killing and heart-protective drugs.
The innovation addresses a fundamental problem that has haunted medicine for decades: we have powerful therapies, but almost no way to ensure they reach their intended target. Cancer patients often take multiple drugs in extremely high doses, hoping enough will find their way to the tumor. Heart patients swallow medications that flood their entire systems. Singla's "smart, tiny bubbles" change that equation entirely.
The breakthrough emerged from Singla's work on a cruel irony of cancer treatment—that the very therapies designed to kill tumors often damage the heart through inflammatory pathways. Working as professor and head of the College of Medicine's Division of Metabolic and Cardiovascular Sciences, he developed a system that places anti-inflammatory drugs inside exosomes and coats them with cell-specific markers, essentially creating a biological GPS system that directs treatment to the exact site of cardiac injury. His team simultaneously engineered a parallel approach to deliver cancer-killing drugs with similar precision.
In laboratory tests, the results proved striking. Testing on triple-negative breast cancer—the deadliest form, with a 77–78% five-year survival rate—the therapy killed cancer cells at much lower doses than conventional chemotherapy while simultaneously protecting heart tissue. For cancer patients, that could mean effective treatment without the devastating side effects that often accompany conventional care. "These therapies can work hand-in-hand," Singla explained. "They can treat cancer and protect the heart."
The patent-pending technology would be sitting in academic papers if not for Chakri Toleti, an Orlando-based healthcare technology entrepreneur and UCF donor whose personal mission transformed the project's trajectory. Toleti, who lost his father to cancer, saw in Singla's work something rare: a fundamental shift in how targeted therapies could be delivered. He partnered with Singla and helped establish Exomic to navigate the long road from laboratory promise to clinical reality—manufacturing the therapy at scale and securing FDA approval for human trials.
Toleti's track record speaks to his commitment: his previous venture, care.ai, was recently acquired by medical device giant Stryker, demonstrating his ability to translate biomedical innovation into real-world deployment. "This represents a fundamental shift toward new biomedical platforms not only in how targeted therapies are delivered in the human body, but in how we think about treatment and healing itself," Toleti said.
The human dimension runs deeper still. Graduate student Jonatas De Mendonca Rolando earned his Ph.D. in biomedical sciences this month and remains at UCF as a postdoctoral researcher, continuing to refine the exosome protocols that could eventually save lives. With financial backing now in place, the path from vision to patients has never been clearer. The next phase—manufacturing and FDA clinical trials—is already underway.