Radioactive Implant Clears Tumor With Unprecedented Preclinical Success

Engineers at Duke University have developed a new delivery system for cancer therapy, demonstrating its potential for one of the most troublesome forms of the disease. In a newly published mouse study of pancreatic cancer, scientists show that radioactive implants can completely eliminate most tumors in rodents, among those previously studied in preclinical models. It has proven to be the most effective treatment for

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat. This type of tumor cell is highly evasive and accumulates mutations that make it resistant to many drugs. Although it accounts for only 3.2% of all cancers, it is his third leading cause of cancer-related deaths. One way to tackle this is to deploy chemotherapy to keep tumor cells vulnerable to radiation and then target the tumor with a beam of radiation.

But doing it in a way that attacks the tumor but doesn’t expose the patient to large doses of radiation is a fine line and increases the risk of serious side effects. It is the attack of a tumor from within with radioactive substances using an implant that can be placed directly inside the tumor. They have made several penetrations using titanium shells to encase radioactive samples, but these can damage surrounding tissue.

“Currently, there is no good way to treat pancreatic cancer,” said study author Jeff Schall.

Schaal and his team investigated alternative types of implants made from more biocompatible materials that do not pose the same risks to the human body. Scientists used synthetic chains of amino acids known as elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs). ELP remains liquid at room temperature, but forms a stable gel-like substance in the body’s warm environment.

This substance was injected into tumors of various mouse models of pancreatic cancer, along with a radioactive element called iodine-131, a well-studied and widely used isotope in medicine. , preventing them from leaking into the body, but allowing the release of beta rays that penetrate the surrounding tumor. When the radiation is consumed, the ELP biogel safely breaks down into harmless amino acids.

This treatment was tested in combination with a common chemotherapy drug called paclitaxel. Radioactive implants were injected into cancerous tumors just under the skin, but also into mutations known to occur in pancreatic cancer and into tumors of the pancreas itself that have historically been more difficult to treat. I got

In all models tested, scientists report a 100% response rate to treatment. In three-quarters of the models, dual treatment had an 80% chance of complete tumor elimination. Scientists wanted to explore their potential for one of the most vexing forms of pancreatic cancer, which is why they rolled out new treatments for pancreatic cancer, but these results portend its broader application. believe.

“We believe that a constant dose of radiation will allow a stronger interaction between the drug and its effects than with external beam radiation therapy,” Schaal said. “This leads us to believe that this approach may actually be more effective than external beam radiation therapy for many other cancers as well.”

There’s a lot of work to do before that, but the immediate next step for researchers is testing in larger animals. They say these findings are unparalleled in terms of how effectively the treatment was able to disrupt tumors, and team member Ashutosh Chirkoti said his lab was nearly He said it was “probably the most exciting” result for late-stage pancreatic cancer in 20 years. .

“We probed more than 1,100 treatments across preclinical models, and none of them resulted in tumor shrinkage and disappearance like we did,” said Schaal. “When other literature says what we’re seeing won’t happen, that’s when we knew we had something very interesting.”

A study was published in a journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

sauce: Duke University via medical express