Computational modeling of drug transport and mixing in the chemofilter device: enhancing the removal of chemotherapeutics from circulation.

Intra-arterial chemotherapy (IAC) is the preferred treatment for non-resectable hepatocellular carcinoma. A large fraction of IAC drugs, e.g., Doxorubicin, pass into systemic circulation, causing cardiac toxicity and reducing effectiveness of the procedure. These excessive drugs can be captured by the Chemofilter-a 3D-printable, catheter-based device deployed in a vein downstream of the liver during IAC. In this study, alternative configurations of the Chemofilter device were compared by evaluating their hemodynamic and filtration performance through multiphysics computational fluid dynamics simulations. Two designs were evaluated, a honeycomb-like structure of parallel hexagonal channels (honeycomb Chemofilter) and a cubic lattice of struts (strutted Chemofilter). The computationally optimized Chemofilter design contains three honeycomb stages, each perforated and twisted, which improved Doxorubicin adsorption by 44.6% compared to a straight channel design. The multiphysics simulations predicted an overall 66.8% decrease in concentration with a 2.9 mm-Hg pressure drop across the optimized device compared to a 50% concentration decrease observed during in-vivo experiments conducted with the strutted Chemofilter. The Doxorubicin transport simulations demonstrated the effectiveness of the Chemofilter in removing excessive drugs from circulation while minimizing pressure drop and eliminating flow stagnation regions prone to thrombosis. These results demonstrate the value of the multiphysics modeling approach in device optimization and experimental burden reduction.