Fizzy drink could aid chemotherapy success

SCIENTISTS are developing a fizzy drink that they hope may help cancer treatment.

Oxford University researchers are investigating how to re-oxygenate tumours with a drink that could deliver extra oxygen to the site of the tumour, allowing radiotherapy and chemotherapy to deliver a knockout blow.

Some tumours have learnt to adapt to harsher, low-oxygen conditions making them more resistant to drugs. This is because as tumours grow, the blood vessels delivering essential nutrients, including oxygen, become increasingly twisted and weak, meaning that chemotherapy fails to penetrate the heart of the tumour.

Scientists from Cancer Research UK are investigating how oxygen bubbles get from the stomach to pancreatic tumours in the laboratory and are working out whether this could be done by giving patients the equivalent of a fizzy drink. The scientists chose pancreatic cancer because these tumours are bad- ly starved of oxygen and so patients have limited treatment options.

Current methods of oxygenating tumours in patients includes breathing pure oxygen, putting patients in oxygen chambers or injecting liquids full of oxygen directly to the tumour site. These are effective, but can have serious side effects, including damage to the lungs and nervous system.

Prof Eleanor Stride, at the University of Oxford, said: “We’ve had success in the lab in mice, so we’re now looking at how to scale this up for patients.”