Source: Good News Network
Scientists have developed sponges that could drastically reduce the negative side effects induced by chemotherapy against deadly cancers.
By inserting the tiny sponges into the bloodstream, the devices can help to prevent the dangerous side effects of toxic chemotherapy agents by absorbing the excess chemicals.
Doctors also hope that the sponges will allow them to deliver higher doses in order to knock back tumors, like liver cancer, that don’t respond to more benign treatments.The “drug sponge” is an absorbent polymer coating a cylinder that is 3D printed to fit precisely in a vein that carries the blood flowing out of the target organ – the liver in liver cancer, for example. There, it would sop up any drug not absorbed by the tumor, preventing it from reaching and potentially poisoning other organs.
In early tests, the polymer-coated drug absorber took up, on average, 64% of a liver cancer drug – the chemotherapy agent doxorubicin – injected upstream.
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“Surgeons snake a wire into the bloodstream and place the sponge like a stent, and just leave it in for the amount of time you give chemotherapy, perhaps a few hours,” said Nitash Balsara, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Because it is a temporary device, there is a lower bar in terms of approval by the FDA,” said Steven Hetts, an interventional radiologist at UC San Francisco who first approached Balsara in search of a way to remove drugs from the bloodstream. “I think this type of chemofilter is one of the shortest pathways to patients.”
Most anticancer drugs are poisonous, so doctors walk a delicate line when administering chemotherapy. A dose must be sufficient to kill or stop the growth of cancer cells, but not high enough to irreparably damage the patient’s other organs. Even so, chemotherapy is typically accompanied by major side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and suppression of the immune system, not to mention hair loss and ulcers.
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“We are developing this around liver cancer because it is a big public health threat – there are tens of thousands of new cases every year – and we already treat liver cancer using intra-arterial chemotherapy,” Hetts said. “But if you think about it, you could use this sort of approach for any tumor or any disease that is confined…
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