MANUFACTURING OF TPM SUITABLE FOR HUMAN USE

Peritoneal cancers are major health concerns in the US. There are over 230,000 new cases of cancers arising from organs in the peritoneal cavity. Pharmaceutical companies generally focus on drugs given by intravenous or oral administration.

However, systemic therapy often does not deliver sufficient drug levels to solid tumors due to inadequate blood perfusion and high interstitial fluid pressure in tumors.

On the other hand, intraperitoneal (ip) chemotherapy has demonstrated impressive survival advantage in multiple NIH-funded randomized trials. Due to the lack of approved ip products, these earlier studies had used intravenous formulations.

This approach has two limitations: (a) restricted drug penetration to the tumor periphery diminishes the efficacy of ip treatment in patients with larger tumors (>1 cm), and b) ip therapy is associated with infection (due to indwelling catheter) and toxicity from high local drug levels (abdominal pain).

These problems have prevented wide-spread use of ip therapy in spite of the demonstrated efficacy.