The chemotherapy drugs that Mark Davis’ wife needed to battle breast cancer made her horribly ill. Davis, a chemical engineer at the California Institute of Technology, resolved to find a better way. Most chemo drugs attack healthy as well as cancerous cells, thus causing awful side effects. Davis devised a solution that’s now in clinical trials. He bonded the molecules of a strong drug with those of a polymer. The resulting molecules are too big to pass through blood vessels in healthy tissues but can slip through the leakier blood vessels that feed tumors. In one test, the new drug delivery method effectively treated a case of pancreatic cancer considered to be fatal. No wonder biomedical engineering is such a popular, fast-growing discipline.

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Filed under: Biomedical, Chemical, Explore Engineering

Tags: Biomedical, Chemical, Engineering Is