SCIENCE UPDATE

In the future, a small filter will cleanse cancer patients’ blood of chemo drugs, so they can avoid nausea and fatigue.

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MEDICINE Fatigue, nausea, diarrhoea and heart attacks are all side effects of chemotherapy. Although the treatment can save severely-ill cancer patients, its side effects are a major problem, as the cell toxin doesn't only attack cancer cells but also the healthy cells of the body. Scientists from the US University of California have found a solution to the problem.

Some of the side effects can be avoided by injecting chemo drugs directly into a blood vessel right beside the cancer tumour, meaning that the medication is not sent through the entire body, but rather travels directly into the tumour. This doesn't solve the entire problem, however, as there will still be medication in the blood that travels around or through the tumour – and that is true for 50-80% of the medication that is injected.

So the American scientists have developed a small filter that collects medication in the blood. The filter is 3D-printed and shaped like a cylinder that is 3cm long with a diameter of 0.5cm and an internal grid structure which is lined with a resin-like material that binds to chemo drugs. In the lab, the scientists tested different varieties of filter, and have now found a sufficiently fine-meshed structure that collects as much medication as possible without the filter increasing the patient’s risk of blood clots. The scientists also experimented with different chemical make-ups for the lining of the filter.

Finally, the scientists implanted the filter into the blood vessels of pigs, then injecting a special type of liver cancer drug, Doxorubicin, into the blood stream a few centimetres from the filter. The experiments demonstrated that on average the filter absorbed 64% of the chemo medication included in the blood that passed through it.

The scientists hope that their new invention can be tested on humans within a few years.