UCSF

Endovascular chemotherapy is an effective treatment option for cancer, however, the therapeutic agents used in this procedure often travel to non-target tissues and cause severe toxicity. Side-effects of chemotherapy range from nausea to life-threatening conditions. A strategy to reduce exposure of healthy tissues and organs to the toxicity of chemotherapeutic agents, such as doxorubicin (DOX), is to remove these drugs from systemic circulation after they have passed through the tumor site. With this goal in mind, different types of ChemoFilter devices have shown promise in alleviating these detrimental side effects. When placed downstream from the targeted tumor during intra-arterial chemotherapy, excess therapeutic agents bind to the device, preventing them from entering systemic circulation. In this study, we evaluated the doxorubicin-binding efficacy of a 3D printed porous cylindrical ChemoFilter device coated with sulfonated pentablock copolymers. Closed-circuit flow models experiments integrating 11 devices (uncoated or coated) at two concentrations of DOX (0.01 mg/mL and 0.05 mg/mL) were conducted. Samples collected from these flow models were used to treat H9c2 cell cultures, a rat embryonic cardiac cell line selected due to DOX cardiotoxicity. After a 24-hour treatment period, cell viability was calculated using the Trypan blue exclusion method. At 0.01 mg/mL DOX and 0.05 mg/mL DOX, the 3D printed polystyrenesulfonate-coated absorbers effectively filtered and eliminated DOX toxicity, increasing the H9c2 cell viability by 12.97% and 23.11%, respectively. These results confirm the ChemoFilter’s ability to successfully absorb DOX in vitro, showing promise for its possible future use in clinical trials.