Cancer has ever since been one of the many problems and conditions our kind ever came across. Because of the severity of the illness; together with its nature, it really is something medicine should have had resolved. Various treatments for cancer have been innovated, chemotherapy being the most popular.
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New treatment for cancer?
Good news and take note, this is not a hoax and this has Scientific basis; researchers from the United States of America (U.S.A.) were able to develop a patch which has the main function to deliver relevant cancer medications through the skin.
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That being said, this innovation seems to be somewhat an experimental “patch” that would infuse medications for cancer through a patient’s skin, as discussed by the American Chemical Society (ACS) during a medical conference in San Diego, California.
What would the “new treatment for cancer” provide?
Based on the study and research done by researchers and Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), this discovery is a skin patch they’ve innovated was made to battle a highly-serious but treatable type of skin cancer—melanoma.
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Yes, you read it right; with a simple skin patch, all of the treatment traditionally given to a skin cancer patient would be compressed in a patch.
A skin patch to help treat cancer?
If you’re wondering how the patch looks like, it’s a simple strap of patch that looks like a band-aid. It is less than one (1) centimeter long and it comes with a sticky film.
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This film is what allows the patch to be attached and removed from the skin in just sixty (60) seconds or one (1) minute.
What Scientists and researchers did was they utilized the device, the “skin patch” to deliver and inject an antigen in healthy mice.
Then, they compared the immune response to treatment methods frequently used to vaccinate against the common infections—flu and measles.
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They labeled the said skin patch as a “robust antibody response.” Meaning, it displayed a significant amount of positive results that has shown promising results in inducing an intensive immune response in the human skin.
In addition to that, the researchers said that this new technology is not limited to treating cancer alone.
Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at M.I.T., and author of the study Dr. Paula Hammond, said that they are anticipating their innovation to be more than just treatment for cancer.
Our patch technology could be used to deliver vaccines to combat different infectious diseases. But we are excited by the possibility that the patch is another tool in the oncologists’ arsenal against cancer, specifically melanoma.”
How does the new skin patch innovation work?
The research said that through chicken ovalbumin made as a model antigen, they were able to vaccinate the mice with their painless micro needle patches.
After doing so, they made a comparison with the results they had with subcutaneous and intramuscular injections.
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As for the effect, the micro needle patch treatment they produced was nine (9) times the antibody level compared to the intramuscular injections. What’s more astounding is that it was 160 times the antibody level compared to subcutaneous injections, as per the study.
Yanpu He, a PhD student of M.I.T. who helped develop the device, said that their device contains a rare model and series of reactions that allow the patch to deliver sufficient dosages of medication for even just a minute of exposure.
Our patch has a unique chemical coating and mode of action that allows it to be applied and removed from the skin in just a minute while still delivering a therapeutic dose of drugs.”
What do you think about the new discovery for a new treatment of cancer and other infectious diseases? Would this aid in the development in the medical field?
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The research suggests that should this innovation be successful, it is going to be offered three (3) to five (5) years from now.
Source: CNBC
