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A team of surgeons, anesthesiologists and engineers at UIC, including University of Illinois Cancer Center members, is working on a new pancreatic cancer treatment, which separates cancer cells from the bloodstream using a small chip device.

They are studying how lidocaine, a common local anesthetic, affects pancreatic cancer cells released into the bloodstream during surgery. Featured in UIC Today, their latest advancement evaluates a method for capturing these rogue cells and is published in the journal Lab on a Chip.

Cancer Center Translational Oncology Research Program members Effrossyni Gina" Votta-Velis, MD, and Ian Papautsky, PhD

“I really expect that the results of this study may help our patients,” said Cancer Center member Effrossyni "Gina" Votta-Velis, MD, a lead investigator who practices pain management at UI Health and is a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at UIC. “The notion that lidocaine, which has been used to relieve pain for more than 65 years, may mitigate metastasis and favorably affect patient outcomes is highly innovative.”

UI Health is UIC's academic health enterprise, which includes the Cancer Center.

Also part of the project is fellow Cancer Center member Ian Papautsky, PhD, the UIC Richard and Loan Hill Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering at UIC. He specializes in microfluidics, which is how small amounts of fluids, like blood, flow through minute channels.

Both Votta-Velis and Papautsky are members of the Translational Oncology Research Program at the Cancer Center.

Co-investigator Pier Cristoforo Giulianotti, MD, is a world-renowned expert in the surgical treatment of hepatobiliary pancreatic cancer malignancies and Chief of General, Minimally Invasive and Robotic Surgery at UI Health.

Click this link to read the full story in UIC Today.