UCI team develops precise approach chemotherapy drug delivery

Chemotherapy is one of the most effective ways to fight cancer, but the toxic medicine can cause collateral damage to healthy tissue. UC Irvine’s Kenneth Longmuir, physiology & biophysics associate professor (pictured left), and Richard Robertson, anatomy & neurobiology professor, believe they have developed a way for these drugs to reach specific tumors with increased precision, thereby limiting side effects. In a study appearing online in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics, the researchers show that doxorubicin commonly used to treat a number of cancers can be directed almost entirely to a particular spot in the body with virtually no spread to other organs. “This promising approach opens up a new avenue to helping people survive cancer,” Longmuir says.