The Effect of Infusion Position on Convection-Enhanced Delivery of Anticancer Drugs to Remnant Brain Tumour after Surgery

Research Interests:  biomedical engineering and bioprocessing, with a special focus on transport processes in biological and physiological systems.

Teaching Interests: mass transfer

Convection enhanced delivery is a promising method to overcome the blood-brain barrier and brain-tumour barrier to improve the drug delivery into tumour interior and enhance the treatment efficacy. In this study, a 3-D geometry of a remnant brain tumour and its normal holding tissue is reconstructed from MR images. A developed mathematical model is applied to investigate the effects of infusion position on the spatial distribution of carmustine and paclitaxel. Results show that infusion position is an important impact factor in CED treatments, and the effect of infusion position varies with the drug. For carmustine, most of the drugs accumulate around the infusion site to form a highly heterogeneous distribution in tumour. The heterogeneity and the spatial average concentration can be reduced by infusing carmustine into the cavity. Paclitaxel is capable to penetrate deep into the brain tumour tissue with the enhanced interstitial fluid flow. However, infusing paclitaxel in the downstream can reduce the homogeneity and spatial averaged concentration in the whole remnant tumour.