Mixing oil with water - cancer patients may be first to benefit

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 11 Jan 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Cancer patients may be among the first to benefit from a discovery that allows oil to mix with water.

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra say removing all the gas from water enables it to mix freely with oil.

Professor Ric Pashley says the discovery could end the need to use detergents to mix oil-based drugs for cancer patients with water.

He says once the gas is removed the oil mixes easily into water.

'What you have to use at the moment is detergents and dispersing agents and solvents and those additives are often a complication and a detrimental addition to the drugs delivery system,' he said.

'It would be great if we could deliver these oily drug molecules just in pure water and then they wouldn't have these side effects,' he said.

He says there are also benefits for the perfume industry and for latex paints.

'Detergents are used to stabilise that process but these detergents then act as a barrier for the drying process when you actually paint,' Professor Pashley said.

'It's going to be very interesting to make a latex paint, household-type paint, without using any detergent but using this degassing process and we hope to do those experiments this year.'

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