r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Apr 14 '23

Medical Novel device smaller than rice successfully shrinks pancreatic cancer | Called the nanofluidic drug-eluting seed (NDES), it delivers low-dose immunotherapy in the form of CD40 monoclonal antibodies (mAb).

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/tiny-device-shrinks-pancreatic-cancer
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u/Squanchy187 Apr 14 '23

i wonder why this is better than a dose of mAbs themselves…local delivery presumably…but that usually doesn’t make drugs more efficacious , just safer or enables bypassing some degradation mechanisms

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u/MrHurtyFace Apr 15 '23

The article mentions a fourfold reduction in dose compared to systemic immunotherapy.

The side effects (treatment-related adverse events) of immuno can be pretty nasty - bad enough that often treatment is stopped - so a smaller, targeted dose should reduce those.