New injection for cancer treatment

Researchers say that a new way of injecting drugs leads to prospects in reducing side effects when treating cancer and improving the cure rate, according to Top News.

According to experts at the University of Glasgow (UK), injecting drugs into the arteries of cancer patients, instead of veins, may be more effective in reaching head and neck cancer tumors.

They believe this method, if successful in human trials next year, may also apply to other types of cancer.

In general, chemotherapy is used through a "drip" infusion in the arm, making chemotherapy drugs spread throughout the patient's body, including cancer cells.

Cancer cell

However, chemotherapy is rarely proposed as the only treatment for head and neck cancer because of its toxicity and the probability of healing is very low.

Dr. Manosh Paul and colleagues at Glasgow University have studied and found a new way to use drug delivery in arteries.

This will focus chemotherapy drugs in the area around the tumor, with lower doses for vulnerable organs with toxicity.

This method is expected to result in a higher rate of successful treatment and fewer side effects.

Dr. Paul has applied fluid dynamics techniques to model the distribution and concentration of chemotherapy drugs around head and neck tumors.

'Something when injected into a vein goes into the heart, then to the cancer cell. But when it is injected into the artery, it goes to the cancer cell first. Our goal is to demonstrate this way more effectively , 'he said.

'There are some extra arteries that you can temporarily prevent during treatment to help focus chemotherapy , ' he added.

This work is done in parallel with studies examining cancer cells in the laboratory to determine the dose needed for each patient. The computer model then offers the ideal method of drug delivery to achieve the correct dose for each patient.