Fighting cancer relapse with remote activation of nanoconstruct: preliminary screening of possible solutions for an extracorporeal circuation set-up

Cancer relapse is a leading cause of death nowadays, which brings related health and financial costs. The XtraUS European project, in which this Master Thesis is inserted, aims at developing a device to treat circulating cancer cells in the bloodstream responsible of tumour recurrence. The core idea is the application of an extracorporeal blood circulation technology in which the combination of a stimulus with responsive and targeted nanoconstructs can lead to toxic species able to kill circulating tumour cells. The aim of the work is the study of this energetic stimulation on nanoconstructs and its consequences, in different static experimental set-up, in order to test an already approved device, but also move to other possible arrangements for the future development of a cartridge for blood treatment. Both experimental studies with an ad-hoc set-up and simulations using the software COMSOL Multiphysics were run and results were used to validate experimental data. The two techniques analysed revealed similar results that permit to do a first screening of different experimental set-up. As a consequence, a commercially available cartridge and relative silicone tubes tested were abandoned for moving to the polystyrene single well. A deeper investigation on this set-up showed the importance of: solution volume and related height as well as thicknesses of the material. Furthermore simulations helped to understand the energy field distribution in the well. This work represented a starting step for the XtraUS European project helping to decide the right path for the development of the future technology. The future perspectives are represented by the dynamic condition testing on the already studied single well and in alternatives settings.