Enhancing HIPEC for Ovarian Cancer using Adjunctive Biomaterials

Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal gynecological malignancies, with high mortality rates primarily due to late-stage diagnoses and extensive peritoneal metastases. Despite improvements in surgical and chemotherapeutic treatments, the prognosis for advanced ovarian cancer remains poor, highlighting the urgent need for innovative therapeutic approaches. Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) has emerged as a promising treatment, delivering heated chemotherapeutic agents directly into the peritoneal cavity post-cytoreductive surgery. However, HIPEC adoption is limited by three critical complications: suboptimal therapeutic efficacy in resistant tumors; abdominal adhesion formation; and systemic toxicity, including cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. This study investigates carbon monoxide gas- entrapping materials (CO-GEMs) as a novel multifunctional adjunctive therapy to address the three HIPEC limitations simultaneously. CO-GEMs effectively encapsulate and deliver carbon monoxide, leveraging the differential effects of CO in cancerous where it has been shown to reduce tumor burden. In ovarian cancer models, CO-GEMs significantly enhanced cisplatin efficacy, reducing the metastatic tumor burden by 46.6% through the downregulation of drug resistance pathways, including the IL-17, TNF, and NF-κB pathways; ECM receptor interaction, and VEGF signaling. CO-GEMs also prevented peritoneal adhesion formation by suppressing inflammatory cell infiltration and collagen deposition, with a significant reduction in adhesion severity scores. Additionally, enteral CO-GEMs provided significant nephroprotection against cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury, as demonstrated by reduced blood urea nitrogen levels. CO-GEMs represent a promising innovation that simultaneously improves HIPEC therapeutic efficacy, prevents surgical complications, and reduces systemic toxicity. This multifunctional approach addresses multiple clinical limitations of HIPEC, potentially transforming treatment outcomes for patients with advanced ovarian cancer through an enhanced therapeutic index and improved safety profile.