ChemoFilter: A Novel Catheter Device to Enable High-Dose Chemotherapy Treatment

Project Summary: Intravenous dosing of drugs for applications ranging from cancer chemotherapy to anti-microbials to lytic (blood clot dissolving) agents is limited by systemic toxicity. Currently, the only ways to remove drugs from the blood are throughnatural metabolism or costly impractical measures such as dialysis. Despite intense focus on targeted drug delivery agents, these therapies are costly and rare, especially considering traditional older drugs are low-cost yet clinically effective, and can be used in a targeted manner with higher efficacy if they could be filtered out of the body after their effect in order to prevent toxicities. Intra-arterial chemotherapy (IAC) is performed in interventional radiology (IR), enabling direct delivery of chemotherapy to tumors by guiding micro-catheters into the arteries feeding these tumors. IAC with Doxorubicin (Dox) has proven to be a successful method demonstrating mortality benefit in randomized controlled trials (1, 2) for treating non- operative prima