Cancer treatment is a considered by most a “trial and error”, if your giving a patient a combination of medication it may not always work. Time can be lost while looking for a combination of medications to beat back the tumor. Now two research teams say they have found a way that can speed up the process of giving and allowing doctors to try more then one treatment at one time. This device in an implantable device, and a special injection device, it was made in Seattle by the researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the company Presage Biosciences designed a device called CIVO that includes up to eight needles are arranged in an array. The device can be used to inject multiple drugs into tumors that are to close to the surface of the skin. The needles are loaded with drugs and then pressed into the tumor then taken out. With each individual needle carrying its own drug it is left behind with a streak of drug that spans the intensity of the tumor.
Then one to three days later researchers can take a piece of the tumor and examine the cells it and seeing the effect of each individual drug and seeing if killed the tumor cal or slowed down growth or had no affect at all. This device can tell doctors whether this drug is affective or not, It can also show doctors which group of drugs has been effective in each case. With CIVO, doctors can compare two different drugs, Drug A and Drug B at the same time, allowing them to see results of the effectiveness of either drug more efficiently. CIVO can also be an advantage to drug development and doctors can perform controlled experiments that don’t require flooding a patient with experimental chemo drugs. The device has been tested on mice, 20 dogs and 4 human patients, the four human patients all had lymphomas. The patients said they didn’t experience too much pain at the site of injection.
Researchers at MIT built a cylindrical device the size of a rice grain that is riddled with microscopic tubes. Each individual tube can hold a different drug, and the device can hold up to thirty drugs at one time. Unlike CIVO the device is made to implant itself into the tumor and then flow allows the drug to move from the tubes into the surrounding cancerous tissue. A biopsy is taken of the cancer cell one to two days later, by the doctor taking out the cylinder and a tiny amount of the tissue around it.
With CIVO it’s pointed for doctors to look at the cancerous tissue, to see which drugs worked the best and which ones didn’t work at all. Researchers say it’s a way to predict and see which drug’s the patient will respond the best too.
The FDA recently approved a device called NovoTTF-100A system, this system is used to treat adults with Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) that recurs or progresses after receiving chemotherapy and radiation therapy. When using NovoTTF-100A System health’s care professional places electrodes on the surface of the patients scalp to deliver low-intensity shifting electrical fields that is called “Tumor Treatment Fields”(TTF). The distinctive shape and electrical individuality of separating the tumor cells that makes them prone to damage when uncovered to Tumor Treatment Fields which can stop the tumor growth.
The device is portable and can be powered by batteries or plugged in. Making it much easier to implement into every the every day life of a cancer patient rather then having to travel to a clinic for treatment. Since patients can use the device themselves, they are able to use the device in the comfort of their own home and continue their treatment.
The researchers took 237 patients that have reoccurring GBM or patients that haven’t been responding to treatment. Patients were chosen at random to receive either NovoTTF-100A System or chemotherapy, the study showed equivalent survival rates between patients who received chemo opposed to patients that received NovoTTF-100A System. Patients
