Harnessing Light to Fight Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat. A new method would use light-infused chemotherapy to take on the deadly disease.

cancer cell with light through.
headshot of Jonathan Lovell.
Researcher

Jonathan Lovell, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor and Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat—and the deadliest. Fewer than 10% of patients in advanced stages live beyond five years.

But that picture could change with light-infused chemotherapy, an intervention being developed by Jonathan Lovell, professor of biomedical engineering at the University at Buffalo.

Let there be light

Several factors account for the difficulty of treating pancreatic cancer. The tumors are located deep within the body, they hide within the fibrous tissue of the pancreas, and they don’t have many blood vessels. All of this makes it hard for chemotherapy drugs to reach and then penetrate the tumors.

For years, cancer researchers have known that fat-based particles called liposomes can deliver chemotherapy to pancreatic tumors. Lovell and his research team found that inserting tiny light-emitting fibers directly into tumors allows the drugs to penetrate them more effectively.

“We demonstrate that light-infused chemotherapy can reach these tumors and shrink them,” said Lovell, who was recently awarded a five-year, $2.53 million award from the National Cancer Institute to expand on this line of research.

x-ray image of torso with pancreas glowing in red.

Ten times more effective

In their laboratory experiments, Lovell and his team added a special ingredient called porphyrin-phospholipid (PoP) to the liposomes, making them sensitive to light. This allowed the light-emitting fibers inside the tumors to break open the liposomes and release the chemo, thus delivering a higher dose of the drug to the tumors while limiting exposure to the rest of the body.

They found their technique to be 10 times more effective than current approaches in treating mice with pancreatic cancer. When combined with PD-1 blockers, a type of immunotherapy, it even cured some of the mice.

Lovell is now applying for a grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue developing the treatment, aiming to eventually bring it to human trials. “This method shows promise for treating pancreatic cancer more effectively,” he said, “and could lead to better survival rates in the future.”