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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Using charge to attract excess chemotherapy drugs in the body
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-08-09 19:00:00
	Description:		Opposites attract even in your blood stream. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have teamed up with the University of California, San Francisco to develop a new device that soaks up excess chemotherapy drugs after treatment. The goal is to reduce the toxicity of these treatments and prevent unpleasant side effects. According to engineer Chelsea Chen, the key is electric charge. Chen, who designed the materials for the device, says since certain cancer drugs have a positive charge, she used a negatively charged material in the membrane. "One block is mechanically strong. It keeps the membrane together. It’s made of polyethylene. It’s just like garbage bags, also made of polyethylene. And the other block is the active block. It’s the drug capture block. So it contains sulfonic acid groups, and this group is negatively charged." The device is simply inserted into a vein during a chemotherapy session, then removed afterwards. Chen says the focus is to create a membrane that picks up as much of the drug as quickly as possible, so it doesn’t circulate to the rest of the body.
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