Biodegradable Tumor Sealant for Selective Embolization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current cancer treatments, such as hepatic artery embolization and chemo-embolization, face challenges in selectively targeting tumor tissue while minimizing damage to normal cells, with risks of side effects and incomplete embolus situations leading to hypoxia and malignant transformation.
Innovation Solution
Development of a biodegradable tumor sealant using superabsorbent polymer compounds that permeate through gaps in tumor vessels, swell to form a gel barrier, and block oxygen and nutrition supply, leading to tumor cell necrosis without significant side effects.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If permanent embolic materials are used to achieve strong embolus effect, then tumor blood flow occlusion is improved, but risk of liver function damage and metabolic disorder increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs biodegradable embolic materials that dynamically change their state over time - initially providing strong embolus effect to occlude tumor blood flow, then gradually degrading and metabolizing in the body to restore blood flow. This dynamic property allows the material to adapt from a permanent blocking state to a temporary state, resolving the contradiction between maintaining reliable embolus effect and preventing long-term liver damage.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the key parameter of material biodegradability to resolve the contradiction. By selecting materials with appropriate degradation rates, the embolic effect strength is maintained during the treatment period while ensuring complete metabolism afterward. The degradation time and embolus effect duration are carefully matched to achieve therapeutic goals without causing permanent harm to liver function.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If transient embolic materials are used to reduce liver function damage, then metabolic disorder is reduced, but embolus effect becomes insufficient leading to incomplete tumor occlusion
Solution Approach 1:
The patent optimizes the degradation rate parameter of biodegradable materials to ensure that the material maintains sufficient structural integrity and embolus effect during the required treatment period, then degrades at an appropriate rate. This parameter optimization resolves the contradiction by making the degradation timeline match the therapeutic timeline - the material persists long enough to achieve complete tumor occlusion but degrades soon enough to avoid metabolic disorders.
3Reliability
If spherical embolus beads are used to achieve embolus effect, then blood vessel occlusion is improved, but gaps between beads cause incomplete embolus and hypoxia state
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs gelatin-based biodegradable materials that can form flexible, conforming embolic structures rather than rigid spherical beads. These materials can adapt to the shape of the blood vessel and fill irregular spaces, eliminating gaps between embolic elements. The flexible nature of the gelatin material allows it to conform to vessel walls and completely occlude the blood flow, preventing the hypoxia state that results from incomplete occlusion with spherical beads.
4Duration of action of stationary object
If animal derived materials like gelatin are used for embolization, then biodegradability is improved, but they are regarded as contraindication in Japanese academic societies
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses gelatin as a base material and combines it with other components to create a composite embolic material. This composite approach maintains the excellent biodegradability and embolus effect of gelatin while adding properties that reduce immunogenicity and meet safety requirements. The composite material integrates gelatin's biodegradable characteristics with additional functional properties that eliminate the contraindication issues associated with pure animal-derived materials.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The tumor sealant effectively starves tumor cells, reducing tumor size and preventing malignant transformation, with minimal damage to normal tissue and no major surgical injuries or side effects from anticancer agents.
Implementation Method 1
having a particle size that allows the superabsorbent polymer compound to permeate through gaps between endothelial cells of tumor vessels
Implementation Method 2
swell by absorbing water in the body
Implementation Method 3
forms a gel barrier
Implementation Method 4
forms a barrier of gel composition to block the supply of oxygen and nutrition to the tumor
Data Source
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AI summary
The present invention is directed to provide a tumor sealant that causes no serious side effects or radiation by the agent and is used in a therapy that is an improvement of a very simple and low invasiveness therapy of starving tumor cells and makes radical cure possible. The present invention relates to a particle tumor sealant that can be injected directly into needle-accessible tumor and that cuts off and/or isolates tumor tissue from surrounding tissue including blood vessels by permeating through blood vessels in the tumor site, selectively accumulating in and/or adhering to tumor tissue, swelling with water in the body, settling for a certain time and pressing tumor and peritumoral cells and/or blood vessels, and covering the whole tumor, or a particle tumor sealant that cuts off between blood vessels in a tumor site and tumor tissue.