Prof. Straubinger received the BS degree at University of Rochester (USA) and an MS degree in interdisciplinary cancer sciences at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Buffalo, USA). He earned the PhD in Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, with a research focus on nanoparticle drug delivery systems in cancer. Subsequently, he received training as a postdoctoral scholar in the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Inst. and the UCSF Cancer Research Inst. After a short period as Research Assistant Professor at UCSF, he took a permanent position in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. There he rose through the faculty ranks to the position of UB Distinguished Professor. His research has been funded primarily by the US National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute. One notable project, a major collaborative research effort with investigators in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland UK was aimed at improving drug delivery to pancreatic cancer. This 5-year, $US 4.7M collaborative project with the National Centre for Biotechnology at Dublin City University and the Patrick G Johnston Center for Cancer Research at Queen’s University Belfast was funded under the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme.

Prof. Straubinger’s current focus is the development of drug delivery approaches for pancreatic cancer, a highly fatal disease with few effective treatment options. Recognizing that the marked desmoplasia of pancreatic cancers creates a formidable drug delivery barrier, his lab has pursued a strategy of ‘stromal normalization’ to restore tumor perfusion and permeability that transiently permits nanoparticles, therapeutic antibodies, and antibody-drug conjugates to gain access to pancreatic cancers more efficiently. In the course of that work, his lab identified Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF) /FGF receptor (FGFR) up-regulation as a significant negative regulator of stromal normalization and a positive regulator of pancreatic cancer drug resistance. Subsequent published work reports that FGFR inhibitors, in conjunction with standard-of-care chemotherapy or stromal normalization treatment sequences, enhance the delivery of chemotherapy and nanoparticle drug carriers to pancreatic cancers.