Chemotherapeutic engineering: Concept, feasibility, safety and prospect-a tribute to shu chien's 80th birthday

Abstract

This article is made for the special issue of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering-''Mechanobiology: A Tribute to Shu Chien's Scientific Achievement'' for his 80th Anniversary. Shu Chien is well known as a founder and pioneer of bioengineering. He is the only one in the world who simultaneously holds six academicians: US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering, US Institute of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as Chinese Academy of Sciences and Academia Sinica Taiwan. As one of Shu Chien's PhD students at Columbia University, the author emphasizes in this article the significant contribution of Professor Shu Chien in creating and defining chemotherapeutic engineering as an emerging and prospective multidisciplinary area, which is defined as application and further development of engineering especially chemical engineering principles to solve the problems in chemotherapy of cancer and other fatal diseases such as cardiovascular disease and AIDS. Proof-of-concepts experimental results obtained so far are summarized. Safety issue is addressed. Prospect and outlook are described. In the author's point of view, chemotherapeutic engineering may change the way we make drugs and the way we take drugs, and will thus make significant contribution to the twentieth century medicine. © 2011 Biomedical Engineering Society.