If Colorado researchers have their way, cancer patients will someday be eating their way through chemotherapy.
Researchers with University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus are using a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a way to make chemotherapy edible by using particles found in cow’s milk.
“If you can just stay at home and eat it, you wouldn’t need to go to the hospital,” said Tom Anchordoquy, a professor with the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “You wouldn’t be inconvenienced. You wouldn’t be around other sick people.”
Researchers are aiming to make chemotherapy edible by isolating certain particles found in milk and loading them with the cancer drugs.
While the particles come from cow’s milk, they can also work in humans. When ingested, the fat particles have the ability to move from a person’s stomach into the bloodstream, Anchordoquy said.
“All we’re really doing is taking advantage of a natural pathway,” he said. “We’re just exploiting something that already exists.”
To make them edible, the particles could be put on ice cream or developed into bars or gummies.
“You could put them on anything,” Anchordoquy said.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., with 595,930 people dying from the disease in 2015, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If successful, the edible treatments could offer an alternative to other chemotherapy methods.
Chemotherapy drugs are given to patients in different forms, including through injections and pills that are swallowed, according to the American Cancer Society.
The four-year grant will be used to figure out how to place the drugs on the small particles. Researchers will also work to determine which therapies are safe for oral consumption.
Anchordoquy said that after four years, researchers hope they will have determined which drugs can be used on the milk particles and whether the treatment works in mice.
Michael Graner, an associate professor in the department of neurosurgery, is also working with Anchordoquy on the research.
