Technology - Overview
The current standard of care for cancer patients primarily focuses on Surgery, Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy. These treatments can be effective but can also have a significant impact on the patients’ quality of life.
Surgery is well established in the treatment of colorectal cancer; however it is not always a suitable approach depending on the overall health and age of the patient and the stage of the disease. Surgery for colorectal cancer involves an extensive recuperation period in hospital and an adjustment to having a colostomy bag. Chemotherapy is also associated with many unpleasant side-effects in patients, due to the cytotoxic nature of the drugs, and the fact that it does do not specifically target cancer cells, but also affects healthy cells in the body. The main areas of the body affected by chemotherapy are those with a large turnover of normal cells, such as the lining of the mouth, digestive system, skin, hair and bone marrow. Patients undergoing chemotherapy are at an increased risk of infection as it causes a reduction in the number of white blood cells made by the bone marrow.
Other negative side-effects include nausea, vomiting, hair loss and mouth ulcers. Radiotherapy uses high energy x-ray beams to stop cancer cells from growing. It cannot distinguish cancerous cells from healthy ones therefore healthy cells may also become damaged in the process. It leads to negative side-effects such as fatigue, nausea and hair loss.
Taking all this in to consideration it is clear that there are significant deficiencies in the current standards of care and there is certainly a need for more targeted, less invasive therapies. MitaMed have developed a novel approach for the resolution of gastrointestinal tumours using the EndoVE® device. This new, effective technique is based on the principal of electroporation.