Image-guided, focused ultrasound-triggered drug delivery technology for brain cancers

挽救生命的癌症治疗伴随着许多副作用，这些副作用通常会在很长一段时间内影响患者的生活质量。患者还会出现肝或肾毒性、免疫功能下降等临床症状，从而增加感染甚至内出血的风险。这给国家医疗服务体系带来了沉重的成本，这与增加患者住院时间以监测和管理这些不良反应有关。Apeikon治疗公司是一家总部位于英国的学术初创公司，正在开发一种新技术，以提高癌症治疗的有效性，同时将其副作用降至最低。传统的化疗是全身性的，并且分布在全身，导致不良反应。相反，Apeikon的技术是在脂膜(称为脂质体)中管理化疗药物，这种脂膜有跟踪器，对使用低强度超声波触发的药物释放很敏感。当患者接受治疗时，通过磁共振成像(MRI)检测脂质体跟踪器。这使得肿瘤的定位和超声光束的精确聚焦成为可能。超声束提供了足够的能量来打开脂质体并立即释放药物，而且只在肿瘤内释放。其结果是肿瘤药物浓度增加了10倍，和/或所需给药剂量减少了10倍。精确的靶向给药意味着身体其他部位的药物暴露程度较低，这应该会减少不良副作用。由于超声波几乎导致药物负荷的即时释放，并且因为这是实时可想象的，所以该过程也可以在短时间(小时)内重复，以提供应进一步提高疗效的另一次药物释放。Apeikon的技术已经在癌症临床前模型的概念验证研究中进行了测试，展示了该技术的潜力。该项目旨在进一步描述和开发这项技术(在脑癌模型中)，目的是使其为临床试验做好准备。对于Covid大流行和过去两年由于缺乏筛查而导致的癌症诊断病例增加，该项目尤其及时。预计这将在未来几年导致晚期癌症和癌症负担的增加。

Life-saving cancer treatment comes with many side effects that impact patients' quality of life, often for significant periods of time. Patients also suffer clinical signs such as liver or kidney toxicity, reduced immune function that increases risk of infection and even internal bleeding. This exerts a heavy cost on the National Health Service, related to increased patient hospitalisation to monitor and manage these adverse effects.Apeikon Therapeutics is a UK based academic startup company developing a novel technology to increase effectivenss of cancer treatments while minimising their side effects. Conventional chemotherapy is administered systemically and distributes all over the body causing adverse effects. Instead, Apeikon's technology administers the chemotherapeutics in lipid envelopes (named liposomes) that have a tracker and are sensitive to triggered drug release using low-intensity ultrasound. The liposome tracker is detected by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) when the patient receives the treatment. This allows for the location of tumours and the precise focusing of ultrasound beams onto them. The ultrasound beam provides enough energy to break open the liposomes and release the drugs instantly and only within the tumour. The result is a 10-fold increase in tumour drug concentration and/or a 10-fold decrease in the required administered dose. The precisely targetted delivery means that other parts of the body experience a low drug exposure which should reduce adverse side effects. As the ultrasound causes virtually instant release of the drug load, and because this is imagable in real-time, the process may also be repeated within a short period (hours) to provide another burst of drug release that should further increase efficacy. Apeikon's technology has been tested in proof-of-concept studies in pre-clinical models of cancer, demonstrating the potential of the technique. This project aims to characterise and develop the technology further (in models of brain cancer), with the aim of getting it ready for clinical trials.The project is particularly timely with regard to the Covid pandemic, and the increase in cancer diagnosed cases due to lack of screening during the last two years. This is expected to produce an increase in late stage cancer and cancer burden in the coming years.