Author: Esther Landhuis / Source: Science News
Bringing the filtering abilities of a fuel cell into the blood vessels of living organisms, a new device could cut down on toxic effects of cancer treatment.
At the heart of this approach — recently tested in pigs — is a tiny, cylindrical “sponge” created by 3-D printing. Wedged inside a vein near a tumor being treated with chemotherapy, the sponge could absorb excess drug before it spreads through the body — thus lessening chemotherapy’s harmful side effects, including vomiting, immune suppression or even heart failure.
A human study could launch “in a couple of years, if all the stars are aligned,” says Steve Hetts, a neuroradiologist at the University of California, San Francisco who came up with the drug-capture concept. He worked with engineers at UC Berkeley and elsewhere to create and test prototypes.
A test of the most recent prototype showed that the absorber captured nearly two-thirds of a common chemotherapy drug infused into a nearby vein, without triggering blood clots or other obvious problems in the pig, Hetts and his colleagues report January 9 in ACS Central Science.
The study addresses a major need, says Eleni Liapi, a radiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine not involved with the new work. Existing methods for controlling chemotherapy delivery do not fully block drug escape, she notes. “A technological advancement to reduce unwanted circulating drug is always welcome.
”This image shows a cross-sectional view of a new 3-D printed cylindrical device that could cut down on toxic side effects from cancer treatment. Resin coatings (gold) bind to a chemo drug used to treat liver cancer, experiments show.
Chemo is often delivered intravenously in the hope that some treatment reaches the cancer site. In a more localized form of chemotherapy used to treat hard-to-remove tumors, the drug travels through catheter wires snaked into arteries going straight to the tumor. Although this technique, known as transarterial chemo embolization, or TACE, is…
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