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Despite efforts to develop increasingly targeted and personalized cancer therapeutics, dosing of drugs in cancer chemotherapy is limited by systemic toxic side effects. We have designed, built, and deployed porous absorbers for capturing chemotherapy drugs from the bloodstream after these drugs have had their effect on a tumor, but before they are released into the body where they can cause hazardous side effects. The support structure of the absorbers was built using 3D printing technology. This structure was coated with a nanostructured block copolymer with outer blocks that anchor the polymer chains to the 3D printed support structure and a middle block that has an affinity for the drug. The middle block is polystyrenesulfonate which binds to doxorubicin, a widely used and effective chemotherapy drug with significant toxic side effects. The absorbers are designed for deployment during chemotherapy using minimally invasive image-guided endovascular surgical procedures. We show that the introduction of the absorbers into the blood of swine models enables the capture of 64 ± 6% of the administered drug (doxorubicin) without any immediate adverse effects. Problems related to blood clots, vein wall dissection, and other biocompatibility issues were not observed. This development represents a significant step forward in minimizing toxic side effects of chemotherapy.

The feasibility of dual-energy imaging using a fast kV-switching method on an angiographic C-arm CT system was investigated. Direct measurements of beam quality in the x-ray field demonstrate the stability of the kV-switching method. Phantom and in vivo experiments showed that images did not deviate from those of corresponding kV-constant scans. All performed experiments confirmed the capability of performing fast kV-switching scans on a clinically available C-arm CT system. More complex material decomposition tasks and postprocessing steps will be part of future investigations.

The uniformity results identified major factors degrading image quality. The quantitative results will guide selection of calibration points to mitigate the loss of uniformity. The unique combination of dual-energy and fluoroscopy imaging capabilities with a flat-panel photon-counting detector may enable new applications in interventional radiology.

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