3D-printed 'spanlastics' could change how cancer drugs reach tumors

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University of Mississippi research offers hope that cancer drug therapies packaged in 3D-printed carriers could deliver medication directly to tumors while reducing many of the side effects that cancer patients endure. In a study published in Pharmaceutical Research, the Ole Miss team demonstrated that 3D-printed spanlastics—a tiny carrier filled with cancer-fighting drugs—could be implanted directly at the site of a tumor and kill those cells.

How a new 3D method works

"This paper introduced a new 3D printing concept called FRESH 3D printing," said Mo Maniruzzaman, chair and professor of pharmaceutics and drug delivery. "It uses spanlastics as a new nano-drug delivery vehicle for anticancer drug delivery. We actually applied this on breast cancer cells and we got some really, really promising data."

Traditional chemotherapy is often given orally or injected into the bloodstream, where the circulatory system disperses cancer-fighting therapy throughout the body.

Anticancer therapies target cells that reproduce quickly—such as cancer—but also affect other quick-spreading cells like hair, intestinal linings and skin. This is one of the reasons that chemotherapy has so many side effects, such as hair loss, nausea, vomiting and anemia.

"Delivering chemotherapeutics is always a nasty business because of the severe side effects that the patients experience," said Jaidev Chakka, principal scientist in the School of Pharmacy. "The goal of this publication is: 'How can we minimize those side effects?'"

Delivering the drug directly to the cancer cell could reduce those side effects, said Chakka and Elom Doe, a third-year doctoral student in pharmaceutical sciences.

"Having the drug in an implant, or in our case, a 3D-printed construct, and placing that construct at the tumor sites means we can concentrate the delivery to the tumor area, instead of throughout the whole body," Doe said.

Why tiny carriers matter

Each of the microscopic capsules was 200 to 300 nanometers in length. In comparison, a human hair is approximately 100,000 nanometers wide. Because of their tiny size, the drug nanocarriers can pass through cell membranes, delivering a high dosage of cancer-fighting medication directly to affected cells.

"Every drug for cancer has to act inside the cell, either on RNA or on DNA or inhibiting a cell pathway," Chakka said. "If the drug is not able to penetrate the cell membrane or be taken up by the cell, the effect of the drug is none.

"But when we put that drug in a nanoparticle, we are also protecting the drug from degradation, so we are actually pushing a good amount of drug molecules into the cell in one go."

Because this method focuses on a single area, it would be especially beneficial in early cancer diagnoses, before the disease has a chance to spread, or metastasize, the researchers said.

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Early promise and next steps

While these findings are promising, this lab-based study is only the first step in using spanlastics in cancer treatment, they caution.

"What we did was test how the drug acts in vitro or outside the body," Doe said. "We would have to test it in in-vivo models before we can think of delivering it to patients, and that's not a job you can do in a day."

At the end of those studies, however, the result could be a faster way to fight early cancer diagnoses, Chakka said.

"With this study, we did two things: one is using 3D printing as a fabricating method for a hydrogel-based drug delivery system," he said. "The second one is demonstrating these drug delivery systems can be effective in killing cancer cells in vitro, but there is still a long way to go."

More information

Elom Doe et al, Fresh 3D Printing of Spanlastics Hydrogel for Drug Delivery Applications In Vitro, Pharmaceutical Research (2026). DOI: 10.1007/s11095-026-04068-6

Key concepts

NanostructuresSurfactants, micelles & vesicles

Provided by University of Mississippi