NEW YORK – Cancer patients undergo chemotherapy or some other mainstream cancer treatment and experience various side effects and intense physical suffering. A team of researchers from Shanghai-based Fudan University claims to have devised anticancer therapy that is better and safer than now.
They have developed an implantable battery system that can identify low-oxygen environments in the human body that support tumor activity. The battery system includes a self-charging saltwater battery and an anticancer drug called tirapazamine (TPZ).
Instead of targeting cancer cells individually, the battery-driven drug-delivery system attacks the environment in which many cancer tumors originate and thrive. In a recently published study, the researchers revealed that they also tested their anticancer setup in mouse models having cancer tumors, and the results were exciting.
The absence of oxygen in cancer cells and their surrounding environment is a well-known distinction between them and healthy body cells. Studies in the past have also confirmed that hypoxia or oxygen deficiency favors the progression of cancer cells.
“Pathological hypoxia affects both cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment and plays a pivotal role in process of cancer progression and dissemination. Hypoxia regulates tumor neovascularization, metabolism, cell survival, and cell death,” the authors of a 2015 study on cancer and hypoxia noted.
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