Scientists believe they have found a way to make cancer chemotherapy treatments less toxic to the body.
They have begun testing a tiny sponge that sits inside the vein and removes excess chemo drugs from the blood once they have targeted the tumour. Experts say the early work offers hope of avoiding treatment side-effects such as hair loss and nausea. Researchers are now wanting to test the sponge in people. If it goes well the trials could happen in a couple of years.
The tubular device will be 3D-printed so it can be tailor-made for patients. It has a mesh like centre which is covered in a coating that absorbs the drug but lets blood flow through the device unhindered. The test has been done on pigs and it shows that 64% of a chemotherapy drug called doxorubicin was removed from the bloodstream.
The device would be inserted during chemotherapy and then removed after the session has ended. Each chemotherapy session would require a new device.
Dr Nitash Balsara, from the University of California says the early results are promising and the device should work with other chemotherapy drugs if the coating is well matched.
“We feel that removing 50% of the drug will impact patient outcome substantially,” he added.
Prof Steve Rannard, from Cancer Research UK, said: “This work is an exciting new approach to reduce the side-effects of chemotherapy.
“Chemotherapy is a cornerstone treatment for cancer that saves lives, but can have the unwanted impact of damaging healthy as well as cancerous tissue, which can lead to severe side-effects.
“This study demonstrates this approach can extract drug molecules from the blood and remove high levels of drugs that haven’t been delivered to the cancer in animals, which could be an effective approach to address this challenge.
“We now need to build a greater body of evidence to ensure this technique is safe before we can see if this could be an effective approach in cancer patients.”
As well as this way an experimental chemotherapy drug taken orally is moving into early phase clinical trials as part of a new partnership between Cancer Research UK, Athenex and NIHR. It will run through Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMC) and the NIHR Clinical Research Network.
The partnership will enable researchers to investigate Athenex’s innovative experimental drug Oraxol this is the first oral formulation of the chemotherapy Paclitaxel in combination with other cancer treatments. Paclitaxel is very effective at blocking the growth of cancer and is widely used for a range of cancer types but is currently given to patients through a drip.
Being able to take this type of chemotherapy orally opens up the opportunity for patients to have their treatment at home rather than travelling to hospital regularly.
Dr Ian Walker, Cancer Research UK said: “This exciting partnership will enable us to accelerate the development of a treatment that not only has the potential to improve patient outcomes, but also quality of life.
“We look forward to exploring how this drug can be used in combination with other treatments and hope that it can play a part in addressing the urgent need for new treatments for patients with hard to treat and rare cancers.”
Prof Matt Seymour, who leads for cancer research in the NIHR Clinical Research Network, said: “This is a good example of the UK’s unique environment for bringing together academic researchers, industry innovators and the NHS, to join forces and design clinical research trials for more of our patients. I welcome this new alliance. Most anticancer drugs need to be given by injection in hospital, but programmes like this allowing effective drugs to be taken in tablet form at home, could potentially improve our patients’ experience, and may open up opportunities for more sustained treatment, to keep cancers under better control.”
