Fighting Cancer with Chemical Engineering
- Meenakshi Narayanan
- Aug 21, 2022
- 2 min read
By Meenakshi
Chemical engineering has substantially changed human civilization through its services to improve the quality of life for human beings. And now it’s on its way to combat one of the emperor of all maladies - cancer.
What is chemotherapeutic engineering?
Chemotherapeutic engineering is a branch of engineering that applies and further develops chemical engineering principles, techniques and devices for chemotherapy of cancer and other diseases. It provides new challenges as well as a plethora of new opportunities for chemical engineering.
Current Cancer Treatments
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death and morbidity with a complex pathophysiology. Traditional cancer therapies include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy. The effectiveness of these treatments are limited and patients have to suffer from serious side effects, some of which are life-threatening.
Possible treatments in the future
Chemotherapeutic engineering is emerging to help solve the problems in chemotherapy and to eventually revolutionize the arena of cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Progress in developing various controlled and targeted drug delivery systems is reviewed with an emphasis on nanoparticles.
Nanoparticles
Nanoparticles can be used to treat cancer due to their specific advantages such as biocompatibility, reduced toxicity, excellent stability, enhanced permeability, retention effect, and precise targeting. Nanoparticles are classified into several main categories. The nanoparticle drug delivery system is particular and utilizes tumor and tumor environment characteristics. Nanoparticles not only solve the limitations of conventional cancer treatment but also overcome multidrug resistance. Additionally, as new multidrug resistance mechanisms are unraveled and studied, nanoparticles are being investigated more vigorously. Various therapeutic implications of nanoformulations have created brand new perspectives for cancer treatment. However, most of the research is limited to in vivo and in vitro studies, and the number of approved nanodrugs has not much amplified over the years.
Conclusion
People with cancer suffer from an array of symptoms at all stages of the disease (and its treatment), though these are most frequent and severe in advanced stages. Much of the suffering could be alleviated if currently available symptom control measures were used more widely. For symptoms not amenable to relief by current measures, new approaches must be developed and tested!
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