Compositions comprising a tissue glue and therapeutic agents

Abstract

The present invention concerns compositions comprising a radiotherapeutic agent, or an agent which can be converted to a radiotherapeutic, and a tissue glue. The compositions of the present invention are particularly useful for providing local radiotherapy. The present invention also concerns methods of using the compositions of the invention, particularly for radiotherapy.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No 07 / 988,919, filed May 4, 1993.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] This invention is in the field of medical therapeutics and concerns novel means of delivering therapeutic agents. In particular, this concerns percutaneous or surgical application of therapeutic agents which are intended to remain at or near the location at which they are placed by the treating physician or surgeon. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] There are a number of problems in medicine for which therapy requires direct physical placement of a treating agent. However, the means for achieving this end are extremely limited and this end has seemed to be extraordinarily difficult to achieve. [0004] It is often possible to deliver a drug to a specific location, such as by the injection of local anaesthetic near a nerve which must be numbed. However, most small molecules will diffuse away from their injection site, or ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013] In a broad aspect of the invention, a ferrite or other radiotherapeutic agent, in particulate form, is suspended in a tissue glue, suitably in the pre-mix. If a colloidal solution of, say, β-emitting ferrite is prepared in a tissue glue, this can be applied after surgical resection of a tumour, particularly near an eloquent area of the brain, where a thin shell of tumour may remain, minimising exposure to the surgeon and operating staff. The particles are biodegradable, and so will be resorbed over weeks. A cell adhesion moiety-coupled radionuclide may be used, if the agent is not physically held in the matrix.

Problems solved by technology

There are a number of problems in medicine for which therapy requires direct physical placement of a treating agent.

However, the means for achieving this end are extremely limited and this end has seemed to be extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

It is sometimes possible to place a bead, capsule or seed with an agent at a given location, but it is very difficult to apply such localised therapy over a surface rather than at a single point.

One such problem, well known to surgeons who specialise in the treatment of brain cancer (e.g. gliomas), arises because tumour cells infiltrate into the otherwise normal brain surrounding a gross tumour.

However, even very toxic agents which cause severe toxic side-effects throughout the body have only a very slight slowing effect on tumour cell growth of gliomas.

Radiation therapy may be given but, in young children, the radiation causes grievous harm to the surrounding brain and, in adults as well, there is risk of severe scarring from the radiation which can cause swelling and mass effects in large regions of the brain.

Although radiation clearly slows the growth of the tumour, it is virtually impossible to deliver enough radiation to slow the tumour substantially without causing unacceptable damage to the brain.

Results for treatment of brain cancer remain dismal, and life expectancy after diagnosis is measured in months with or without surgery.

These catheters cause a risk of infection spreading along the catheter and do not provide a uniform field of radiation and are not well suited for treating the surface of the tumour resection bed in the brain.

The problem with this current method is that the painstaking process of gluing on the seeds requires as much as an hour during which time the full operating room team (surgeon, assistant surgeon, radiation therapy treatment planner, radiation therapy technician, anaesthesiologist, scrub nurse, circulating nurse) are all required to be present and are all subject to unshielded radiation exposure.

It is not possible to suspend the seeds in either a liquid cyanoacrylate glue or in either component of a tissue glue as described above, because they would sink out of solution.

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