Bubbles contain lung-cancer drugs

Lung-cancer patients could be treated by inhaling tiny drug-containing bubbles with a new technique being developed by two competing scientific teams from the US and UK.

The inhalation treatment would replace intravenous injections of Cisplatin, a lung-cancer treatment drug usually administered in high doses.

The toxic drug poisons cells and causes side effects that severely debilitate patients as it travels around the blood stream.

Transave, a US biopharmaceutical company, and researchers at Strathclyde University have separately developed a method for delivering Cisplatin directly to the lungs using inhaled bubbles.

While the concept behind their techniques is relatively the same, the materials used to make the bubbles differ. The Transave bubble is based on a lipid and the Strathclyde University team has developed a bubble made of a surfactant, cholesterol and dicetylphosphate.

Katharine Carter, a member of the Strathclyde University research team, said the reagents that make up their bubble are more robust, and the manufacturing method has the potential to be much simpler.