Bioengineered Ionic Liquid for Catheter‐Directed Tissue Ablation, Drug Delivery, and Embolization
Hyeongseop Keum, Hassan Albadawi, Zefu Zhang, Erin H. Graf, Pedro Reck dos Santos, Şeyda Gündüz, Rahmi Öklü
Abstract
Delivery of therapeutics to solid tumors with high bioavailability remains a challenge and is likely the main contributor to the ineffectiveness of immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Here, a catheter-directed ionic liquid embolic (ILE) is bioengineered to achieve durable vascular embolization, uniform tissue ablation, and drug delivery in non-survival and survival porcine models of embolization, outperforming the clinically used embolic agents. To simulate the clinical scenario, rabbit VX2 orthotopic liver tumors are treated showing successful trans-arterial delivery of Nivolumab and effective tumor ablation. Furthermore, similar results are also observed in human ex vivo tumor tissue as well as significant susceptibility of highly resistant patient-derived bacteria is seen to ILE, suggesting that ILE can prevent abscess formation in embolized tissue. ILE represents a new class of liquid embolic agents that can treat tumors, improve the delivery of therapeutics, prevent infectious complications, and potentially increase chemo- and immunotherapy response in solid tumors.