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Tackling cancer with chemotherapeutics is a careful balancing act between killing the tumor and preserving the health of other tissues. Indeed, the side effects of some chemotherapeutic agents can be so severe that the desired dose for eradicating a tumor is unusable.
Researchers are therefore working to find ways to maximize dose while minimizing systemic toxicity. One approach currently in clinical trials is to divert blood after it flows through an organ targeted with localized high-dose chemotherapy and send it through a filtration device before the medication can flow to the rest of the body. However, this is an invasive approach and requires the subsequent monitoring of a patient in an intensive care unit.
In search of a more benign procedure, Steven Hetts of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues are developing in-vein approaches to capture drugs as they exit the treated organ. One ...
