While rapid development of chemotherapy, most in vivo results of chemotherapy only reduce the growth rate of tumors or relatively decrease tumor sizes compared with those in untreated groups. Therefore, despite extensive preclinical and clinical efforts worldwide, tumor tissues still grow, which eventually leads to death in many cases. A treatment to absolutely regress tumors without any surgical resection is thus strongly desired.

Prof. Ding group report a formulation composed of a clinically used antitumor drug irinotecan (IRN) and thermosensitive hydrogel, realizing the steady sustained release of IRN out of the hydrogel for about two weeks. The tumor was significantly regressed after being treated with the IRN/thermogel formulation, and the side effects were very mild. These exciting results might be attributed to the ideal sustained release profile and period of release of the drug from the thermogel and to the significant enhancement of the fraction of the active form of the drug by the thermogel.

The work has been published in the Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Reports with the first author Tianyuan CI. 

Tumor regression achieved by encapsulating a moderately soluble drug into a polymeric thermogel, Tianyuan Ci, Liang Chen, Lin Yu, and Jiandong Ding*, Sci. Rep., 4: 5473 | DOI: 10.1038/srep05473 (2014).Article links: http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140701/srep05473/full/srep05473.html