Tissue Engineering Design of Novel Bio-Therapeutics for Cancer Treatment

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One novel idea for a cancer therapeutic is to use tissue engineering to stop tumour growth and progression of the cancer as it spreads, for example, through creation of a biological patch which can encapsulate the tumour, thus preventing any further growth or metastasis. By careful consideration of the conditions and materials to be used, scaffolds can be created that could control the shape and size of the tumour, and which have potential to be designed to incorporate a range of biomolecules such as growth factors to proteins. This idea could be further developed into a potential method for drug delivery by adding an anti-cancer drug to the engineered patch so that it would not only prevent further tumour growth but also deliver the drug directly to the tumour site. If successful, this could provide a much-needed breakthrough in cancer treatment, with direct targeting of the tumour and reducing the unpleasant side effects associated with current therapeutics. It would also offer a more accurate three-dimensional insight into the tumour environment, compared to current studies which look at two-dimensional cell studies, which are an inaccurate representation of the tumour environment.