ULSAN — A new treatment approach that filters metastasis-triggering substances from the bloodstream outside the body to block cancer from spreading is being developed, breaking from the conventional framework of attacking cancer cells directly.
The Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) said on the 2nd that its Anti-Tumor Blood Purification Technology Research Center was selected for the Korean ARPA-H Project, which is administered by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the K-Health Future Promotion Team of the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. The Korean ARPA-H program funds high-risk, high-reward research and development aimed at solving national health care challenges that conventional approaches have failed to address.
The research center will receive about 8 billion won ($5.8 million) in government funding over the next four and a half years for its project on developing blood purification technology for cancer management. Professor Kang Joo-heon of the Department of Biomedical Engineering will serve as lead researcher, joined by professors Joo Jin-myung and Lee Se-min.
Colorectal cancer becomes far more difficult to treat once it spreads to other organs, sharply reducing survival rates. Current standard treatments remain limited to removing established tumors or attacking cancer cells with chemotherapy drugs, leaving little room to preemptively block the pathway by which cancer cells travel through blood vessels and take hold in other organs.
The research center's proposed solution is external blood purification. Blood is circulated outside the patient's body, where metastasis-promoting substances and micro-signaling molecules that help cancer cells implant are selectively filtered out, and the purified blood is then returned to the body. The approach creates conditions in which cancer cells cannot take root in other organs, severing the chain of metastasis before it begins.
The technology builds on a blood purification platform the team developed for sepsis treatment. Kang's team previously established technology to precisely remove pathogens and inflammatory substances from blood and demonstrated its effectiveness in preclinical large-animal sepsis models. The center plans to extend the platform to oncology and apply it to colorectal cancer patients at risk of recurrence after surgery or with a high likelihood of metastasis. It will also verify the effects of blocking metastasis and suppressing existing tumor growth when the technology is used alongside conventional chemotherapy.
A collaborative network spanning industry, academia, research institutes and hospitals will support clinical application and commercialization. Yonsei University College of Medicine and Seoul National University Bundang Hospital will work on identifying cancer metastasis mechanisms and conducting clinical research, while Artblood and Sebica will build the blood purification medical devices. Evertry will handle clinical trial planning and regulatory approval, and the Korea Testing & Research Institute will take charge of device safety and performance evaluation.
Starting with colorectal cancer, the center plans to complete a general-purpose blood purification device platform that can be applied broadly to various metastatic cancers, with the ultimate goal of entering exploratory clinical trials.
"The blood of cancer patients is a key conduit through which not only cancer cells but also various factors that aid metastasis travel," Kang said. "We will establish a treatment paradigm that actively purifies blood to completely block cancer metastasis pathways, and develop it into a commercial medical device that patients with various metastatic cancers, beyond colorectal cancer, can actually use."
