Novel Implant Identifies Suitable Drug for Individualized Cancer Treatment

Innumerable medications for cancer are available but spotting the one that is effective on the individual patients' tumors is challenging.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a device that may offer a way of testing cancer drugs within the body before administering the full dose.

A tiny implantable container with compartments holding miniscule amounts of different cancer drugs is used for the infusion of drugs. When injected into a tumor, the implant releases the drugs around itself so that nearby slices of the tumor are infused by different drugs.

The activity of each drug on the tumor can be visualized and is a good indicator of which drugs will work on the cancer as a whole. The researchers tested the technique on mice implanted with grafts of three different human cancers to show the accuracy of the method. The same technique can be used to test combination therapies by loading the implant's compartments with different groups of drugs.

Source: Medindia