Chemotherapy agents are notorious for producing severe side-effects. One approach to mitigating this off-target damage is to deliver the chemotherapy directly to a tumor via transarterial infusion, or similar procedures such as transarterial chemoembolization (TACE), and then sequestering any chemotherapeutic in the veins draining the target organ before it enters the systemic circulation. To achieve this approach, we are developing materials that are capable of capturing this errant chemotherapy from the bloodstream. Ultimately, these materials will be used to construct a device (a "chemofilter") that can be depolyed via catheter "downstream" from the tumor, enabling off-target chemotherapy to be intercepted and sequestered before entering systemic circulation. Our approach involves the attachment of drug-capture materials to surfaces. One such drug-capture material is genomic DNA, which enables the capture of DNA-targeting chemotherapy agents. We have explored several methods of achieving DNA attachment and have investigated the ability of different materials to remove chemotherapy agents from biologically relevant solutions. We have observed effective drug capture from solution at clinically relevant concentrations and timescales, indicating that drug capture is a viable strategy for mitigating the harmful side-effects associated with chemotherapy.

Developing materials for drug capture: An approach to removing chemotherapy agents from the bloodstream

256th National Meeting (2018)

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