More Support for Novel Mesothelioma Drug Delivery System
Pharmaceutical researchers working on a way to make the most popular mesothelioma drug more effective have found more evidence that fat may be the answer. The team at Zagazig University in Egypt and Tokushima University in Japan have developed a fat-based coating for the antifolate drug pemetrexed (Alimta) that may help improve outcomes for patients. Pemetrexed is currently the only drug approved specifically to treat malignant mesothelioma and most patients will receive it at some point. Even so, like most mesothelioma therapies, pemetrexed is only marginally effective, in part because the dose has to be limited to avoid serious side effects. The new drug delivery system was designed to get around this problem by encapsulating molecules of pemetrexed in tiny…