The Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) is set to develop a treatment technology that inhibits colorectal cancer metastasis by filtering out metastasis-promoting substances from the blood.

UNIST announced today (September 2) that the Anti-Tumor Blood Purification Technology Research Group has been selected for the Korean version of the ARPA-H project, managed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute's K-Health Future Strategy Unit.

The Korean-style ARPA-H is a national initiative supporting high-risk, high-innovation research and development to address difficult health and medical challenges that cannot be resolved through conventional methods.

The research group will carry out the project titled "Development of Blood Purification Technology for Cancer Management."

Professor Kang Joo-heon of the Department of Biomedical Engineering will serve as the general research director, with Professors Joo Jin-myung and Lee Se-min participating.

The research will be conducted over four and a half years, backed by approximately 8 billion won in government funding.

When colorectal cancer metastasizes to other organs, treatment becomes difficult and survival rates drop significantly.

Current colorectal cancer treatments focus on removing the primary tumor or attacking already spread cancer cells.

However, there remains a lack of methods to preemptively block the process by which cancer cells migrate and settle in other organs.

The research group aims to block such metastasis through "extracorporeal blood purification."

The concept involves circulating a patient's blood outside the body, selectively removing substances and signals that promote metastasis, and returning the purified blood back into the body.

This breaks the chain of metastasis before an environment favorable for cancer cells to take root in other organs is created.

The starting point for this research is blood purification technology that has been developed for treating sepsis.

Professor Kang's research team has developed technology to selectively remove pathogens and inflammatory substances from the blood, and verified its efficacy in preclinical large-animal sepsis models.

Through this project, the research group plans to expand this technology to cancer, developing it into a treatment applicable to colorectal cancer patients with a high risk of postoperative recurrence or high potential for metastasis.

They will also check whether combining this with conventional anti-cancer treatments can suppress new metastasis and the further growth of already spread cancer.

"A cancer patient's blood is not only a pathway for cancer cells to travel, but also a space where various substances promoting metastasis circulate," Professor Kang said. "We aim to establish a new therapeutic concept that breaks the chain of cancer metastasis by purifying the blood."

He added, "Our goal is to prove its efficacy in colorectal cancer, expand the scope of application to various metastatic cancers, and develop it into a blood purification medical device applicable to patients."

(Photo: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Yonhap News)