KSEA events 3D printed absorber for capturing toxic chemotherapy drugs before they spread through the body (191101 KSEA Berkeley Chapter Seminar)
2019.11.09 15:21
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.