PharmaCyte Biotech Uses "Artificial Liver" to Treat Advanced
Pancreatic Cancer
NEW YORK, NY-(Marketwired - July 07, 2016) - PharmaCyte
Biotech's (OTCQB: PMCB) signature live-cell encapsulation
technology, Cell-in-a-Box, is being used in treatments for both
cancer and diabetes. For diabetes, the company's therapy, which is
made up of pinhead-sized, porous capsules filled with insulin
producing cells, will create an "artificial pancreas" for type 1
diabetics and insulin-dependent type 2 diabetics that no longer
produce their own insulin. Meanwhile, for cancer, the company's
therapy is made up of those same pinhead-sized, porous capsules;
however, for advanced pancreatic cancer, they're filled with
genetically modified cells that act as a type of "artificial
liver."
First things first, PharmaCyte's Cell-in-a-Box is not a drug
delivery system. There are no drugs encapsulated inside the porous
capsules for any of its treatments. Instead, for pancreatic cancer,
which we will focus on today, the capsules are filled with about
10,000 live cells that are capable of converting an inactive
chemotherapy drug (ifosfamide) into its active cancer-killing form
- just as the enzyme system in a patient's liver would normally
do.
Keep in mind that because the chemotherapy drug ifosfamide is a
prodrug or an inactive drug, it can travel all over the body and
have no effect whatsoever until it is activated in the liver.
Knowing that, PharmaCyte is, in a way, moving the "normal"
conversion site (the patient's liver) of that inactive drug closer
to the cancerous tumor by using Cell-in-a-Boxcapsules and the live
cells inside them to do the job of the patient's liver or to act as
an "artificial liver."
So how does the treatment work and why is it important to move
the conversion site closer to the pancreatic tumor?
First, we will tackle how PharmaCyte's therapy works.
The encapsulated live cells (Cell-in-a-Box capsules) are placed
as close to the patient's cancerous tumor as possible. Once
implanted, ifosfamide, the aforementioned chemotherapy drug that
needs to be activated in the body, is given to the patient
intravenously at one-third the normal dose. The ifosfamide is then
carried by the circulatory system to where the encapsulated cells
have been placed. When the ifosfamide, which is normally activated
in the liver, comes in contact with the encapsulated live cells in
the Cell-in-a-Box capsules, the chemotherapy drug is activated into
its cancer-killing form right at the site of the cancer.
This is "targeted chemotherapy" in the truest sense, and the
company's therapy has proven effective and safe to use in past
clinical trials. This is how PharmaCyte will use its therapy in an
upcoming Phase 2b clinical trial, so now let's discuss why it's
important to move the drug activation site closer to the pancreatic
tumor in the first place.
There are actually a number of reasons to move the activation
site closer to the tumor. We'll start with the chemotherapy drug
itself. Ifosfamide, when activated, has a very short half-life
(time before it decays and no longer offers any effect), so by
using the cells inside the Cell-in-a-Box capsules to activate the
drug at the site of the tumor, ifosfamide can immediately be the
most effective when it's the most potent before dying off minutes
later.
Without a treatment like PharmaCyte's, ifosfamide would be given
to the patient intravenously and then activated "normally" in the
liver, the activated drug would then affect tissues and organs
other than the pancreas, and by the time it reached the pancreas,
it undoubtedly would have lost much of its effectiveness. So, this,
of course, means to be effective against a pancreatic tumor when
the Cell-in-a-Box capsules are not used, a large dose of the drug
has to be administered.
Using ifosfamide in such large doses has proven to be damaging
for tissues and organs including the patient's liver, and because
the activated drug would come in contact with such other organs and
good cells throughout the body on its way to the pancreas, the side
effects would be intolerable; in fact, this is known to be the
case.
By moving the conversion site as close to the tumor as possible,
PharmaCyte is able to give a much smaller dose of the chemotherapy
drug (one-third the normal dose), which patients are able to
tolerate, and because of the smaller dose, the treatment can be
administered without any side effects from the chemotherapy.
That's right - chemotherapy without any side effects!
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