Completed Cancer Lungs & Breathing

ePIPAC

Funder UKRI
Recipient organisation Alesi Surgical Limited
Funding £2.2M
Period Mar 2023 — Mar 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A patient is diagnosed with cancer that has spread to the lining of the abdominal cavity every 30 seconds, and this condition remains fatal despite modern treatments. This project addresses a critical shortcoming in a newer treatment called PIPAC, which delivers chemotherapy directly into the abdomen as a fine mist. While minimally invasive, the method suffers from poor drug distribution, weak tumour penetration, and long drug settling times—limitations that have prevented its wider use. The research team at Alesi aims to adapt their existing electrostatic precipitation technology—essentially an electrical charge that pulls particles onto surfaces—to the PIPAC procedure. If successful, the technology would improve how evenly chemotherapy drugs coat the abdominal cavity and how deeply they penetrate tumours. It would also shorten the procedure and reduce the risk of dangerous contamination of surgical tools and operating room surfaces. For the roughly 170,000 new patients diagnosed each year in the EU alone, this could mean a more effective, safer, and faster treatment option for a cancer type that currently offers few good outcomes.

View original technical description
Peritoneal metastases (PM) is cancer that has spread to the peritoneum, which is the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity, from other organs. Globally, a patient is diagnosed with PM every 30 seconds. It is common in advanced gynaecological and gastrointestinal cancer with ~170,000 new cases per annum in EU alone. Despite recent developments in advanced therapeutics such as CAR-T treatment, cytoreductive surgery and intraperitoneal chemotherapy, PM is still fatal and patients with PM demonstrate worse clinical outcomes than those with liver and lung metastases. Pressurised intra-peritoneal aerosolised chemotherapy (PIPAC) is a new minimally invasive, localised chemotherapy delivery method for the treatment of PM, whereby chemotherapy is introduced directly into the abdomen. However, PIPAC has significant shortcomings that are limiting its uptake, namely poor drug distribution, suboptimal tumour penetration, prolonged drug sedimentation times. Alesi is seeking to optimise its proprietary surgical electrostatic precipitation technology to PIPAC. This will improve distribution and tissue uptake of the crucial chemotherapy drugs, reduce overall procedure time and avoid dangerous contamination of surgical tools and surfaces in the operating room.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Pressurised IntraPeritoneal Aerosolised Chemotherapy (PIPAC) in the management of cancers of the colon, ovary and stomach: a randomised controlled phase II trial of efficacy in peritoneal metastases.
Pressurised IntraPeritoneal Aerosolised Chemotherapy (PIPAC) in the management of cancers of the colon, ovary and stomach: a randomised controlled phase II trial of efficacy in peritoneal metastases
Pilot study assessing the efficacy of Oxaliplatin based Pressurized IntraPeritoneal Aerosol Chemotherapy (PIPAC) for the treatment of colorectal peritoneal metastases deemed not suitable for cytoreduction and heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy.
IMproving the outcome of Peritoneal and Pleural metastases using Aerosolized ChemoTherapy
Interviewing surgical teams to optimise new chemotherapy delivery method

Original classification

EU-Funded

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