New Minimally Invasive Device to Treat Cancer and other Illnesses

[Ptrk3]

This prototype capsule could help assure compliance with retroviral medication regimen (there's also work going on for capsule that one could swallow and dissolve over time):

Full story from December 2, 2016, edition of Science Daily:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161202101249.htm

From the story:

The capsule can deliver medicinal doses for several days or a few weeks. According to Hood, it can be used for any kind of ailment that needs a localized delivery over several days or a few weeks. This makes it especially tailored for treating cancer, while a larger version of the device, which was originally created by Grattoni, can treat diseases like HIV for up to a year.

"In HIV treatment, you can bombard the virus with drugs to the point that that person is no longer infectious and shows no symptoms," Hood said. "The danger is that if that person stops taking their drugs, the amount of medicine in his or her system drops below the effective dose and the virus is able to become resistant to the treatments."

The capsule, however, could provide a constant delivery of the HIV-battling drugs to prevent such an outcome. Hood noted it can also be used to deliver cortisone to damaged joints to avoid painful, frequent injections, and possibly even to pursue immunotherapy treatments for cancer patients.