PHOENIX - A Mayo Clinic team, led by Rahmi Oklu, M.D., Ph.D., a vascular and interventional radiologist at Mayo Clinic, in collaboration with Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D., of Harvard University, report the development of a new ionic liquid formulation that killed cancer cells and allowed uniform distribution of a chemotherapy drug into liver tumors and other solid tumors in the lab. This discovery could solve a problem that has long plagued drug delivery to tumors and provide new hope to patients with liver cancer awaiting a liver transplant. The preclinical study results are published in Science Translational Medicine.
Dr. Oklu, study author and director of Mayo Clinic's Minimally Invasive Therapeutics Laboratory, says uniform drug delivery to tumors is often riddled with challenges. It's an issue he and the research team are aiming to solve, particularly for patients with liver cancer who are awaiting a transplant.
Dr. Oklu says higher drug doses are often used to encourage drug delivery into the tumor, and these higher doses could lead to significant toxicity. "If the drug cannot penetrate the tumor and remain there, then it cannot do its job," he says.
Watch: Dr. Oklu discusses the ionic liquid formulation research.
