Using Bubbles to Fight Cancer

Oxford University professor Eleanor Stride is boosting cancer therapy to reduce the side-effects of treatment by using targeted drugs housed in microbubbles.

In conventional chemotherapy less than 1% of the total injected drug dose makes it into the tumor. Meaning that the majority of the drug is circulating in a person’s body and transporting toxic agents that cause tremendous side-effects. Prof Stride, a biomedical engineer from the University of Oxford, has developed a method of delivering cancer drugs by encapsulating them inside micro bubbles. This allows for a precise delivery of the drug to a target tumor, increasing the uptake of the drug by four times and improving the efficacy of the treatment. The bubbles either carry or incorporate the drug components, which can either be activated or deactivated for the targeted delivery. There is still a long way to go as clinical trials are awaited, but it is without doubt a groundbreaking approach to tackle today’s medical challenges.