KSEA events 3D printed absorber for capturing toxic chemotherapy drugs before they spread through the body (191101 KSEA Berkeley Chapter Seminar)

TITLE: 3D printed absorber for capturing toxic chemotherapy drugs before they spread through the body

SPEAKER: Prof. Hee Jeung Oh

ABSTRACT: 

Cancer is becoming the leading cause of death in most westernized nations. Despite efforts to develop increasingly targeted and personalized cancer therapeutics, dosing of drugs in cancer chemotherapy is limited by systemic toxic side effects. During intra-arterial chemotherapy infusion to a target organ, excess drug that is not trapped in the target organ passes through to the veins draining the organ, and is then circulated to the rest of the body, causing toxicities in distant locations. Typically, more than 50-80% of the injected drug is not trapped in the target organ and bypasses the tumor to general circulation.

In this context, we have designed, built, and deployed porous absorbers for capturing chemotherapy drugs from the blood stream after these drugs have had their effect on a tumor, but before they are released into the body where they can cause hazardous side effects. The porosity was obtained by 3D printing of lattice structures within a cylinder. The surface of porous cylinders was coated with an ion-containing polymer which is responsible for capturing doxorubicin, a widely used chemotherapy drug with significant toxic side effects. Using a swine model, we show that our initial design enables the capture of 69 % of the administered drug without any immediate adverse effects. Additional improvement in performance may be obtained by changing the chemical composition and thickness of the coating layer, in addition to controlling the lattice structure and size with elastomers. This development represents a significant step forward in minimizing toxic side effects of chemotherapy.

BIO: Hee Jeung Oh is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She will join the Department of Chemical Engineering in Pennsylvania State University in January, 2020. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Hee Jeung completed her graduate training in Chemical Engineering working in Profs. Benny Freeman’s and Donald Paul’s research groups at the University of Texas at Austin, exploring a variety of polymeric materials for membrane-based separation. She first developed solvent-free, melt-processed, robust ion-exchange membranes based on sulfonated polymers, and evaluated water and salt permeation, sorption, and diffusion in the membranes. Her postdoctoral training, working in Prof. Nitash Balsara’s research group at UC Berkeley, focuses on designing porous nanostructured polymers for energy storage, as well as a new emerging biomedical application, “drug capture,” to minimize toxic side effects of cancer chemotherapy drugs. She first designed and developed a 3D printed absorber for capturing chemotherapy drugs downstream of tumors before they spread through the body and cause the toxic side effects.