Silver is often used as a coating on medical equipment used
for chemotherapy. The problem is that this silver coating can break down drugs.
Now, researchers have found a graphene coating that will help boost the effect
of chemotherapy.
(June 30, 2015) Chemotherapy
treatment usually involves the patient receiving medicine through an
intravenous catheter. These catheters, as well as the the equipment attached to
them, are treated with a silver coating which is antibacterial, preventing
bacterial growth and unwanted infections during a treatment.
Researchers at the Department of Physics are now studying
what happens when different drugs come in contact with this silver coating.
Silver breaks down chemotherapy drugs
“We wanted to find potential problem sources in the tubes
used in intravenous catheters. An interaction between the coating and the drugs
was one possibility. Chemotherapy drugs are active substances, so it isn’t hard
to imagine that the medicine could react with the silver,” says Justin Wells.
Wells and his students used x-ray photoemission spectroscopy
(XPS) to look at the surface chemistry of one of the most commonly used chemotherapy
drugs, 5-Fluorouracil (5-Fu), and the interaction between it and the type of
silver coating found in medical equipment.
Using an XPS instrument at the synchrotron lab MAX IV in
Sweden, they found that the antibacterial silver coating actually breaks down
the drugs. Not only does this reduce the effect of a chemotherapy treatment,
but it also creates hydrogen fluoride, a gas that can be harmful both to the
patients and to the medical equipment.