▎ WuXi AppTec content team editor
Have you ever thought about new anti-cancer technologies beyond chemotherapy and radiation therapy? If a technique minimizes side effects, the additional physiological pain suffered by patients during treatment can be significantly reduced.
Recently, the University of Michigan in the United States has brought a non-invasive sonic anti-cancer technology, which can continuously break down liver tumors in rats. This process kills some of the cancer cells and activates immune system function to prevent further metastasis and spread of the cancer cells. This may solve the problem of cancer recurrence and improve the prognosis of patient treatment.
According to the study, published in Cancer, the therapy, also known as histotripsy, is a noninvasive treatment based on focused ultrasound that can damage target tissue with millimeter-level accuracy. This technique has a very unique advantage that can work on tumors of different sizes, locations, and stages of progression. Conventional chemotherapy and radiation therapy may be limited by the above factors.
The new technology was originally developed by conventional ultrasonic technology innovations, such as the ultrasonic imaging technology seen every day, which can use sound waves to produce images of the inside of the body. But scientists at the University of Michigan have modified ultrasound on this basis, creating a unique transducer that can emit ultrasonic pulses of high amplitude, microsecond length.
Ultrasonic transducer arrays used in the lab (Credit: References[1], credit: Marcin Szczepanski, Michigan Engineering)
This pulse creates tiny bubbles within the target tissue that rapidly expand and rupture in a short period of time, creating enormous mechanical pressure on the tissue areas that kill the cells. If directly targeted at the tumor area, the cancerous tissue will quickly fall apart, some dying, some becoming fragments.
The research team tested the technique in rats with liver tumors, and found that the study can regulate the degree of destruction of ultrasound technology, and only need to destroy 50%-70% of the tumor volume can significantly treat the tumor, the tumor that is not destroyed is partially affected, the viability will be significantly reduced, and the immune system of the rat will be more sensitive to the residual tumor and can directly remove the remaining cancer cells.
▲After using the new technology, the tumor volume decreases rapidly and basically does not recur (Image source: Reference[2])
80% of rats treated with ultrasound did not have recurrence or cancer metastasis. "Even if we don't target the entire tumor, we can still allow the tumor to recede and reduce the risk of future cancer metastasis." Study corresponding author Dr Zhen Xu said. In addition, this treatment can further activate the immune system of rats, helping the tumor to regress and prevent spread.
Surgery is not required throughout the treatment and there are few side effects. This means that ultrasound therapy can reap huge benefits at a very low cost. According to the study, this type of technology is now being tested in human liver cancer trials in the United States and Europe. The research team also hopes to see more preclinical and clinical trial results in the future, accelerating the application of the technology in patients.
Resources:
[1] Tumors partially destroyed with sound don't come back. Retrieved Apr 19th, 2022 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-tumors-partially-dont.html
[2] Tejaswi Worlikar et al, Impact of Histotripsy on Development of Intrahepatic Metastases in a Rodent Liver Tumor Model, Cancers (2022). DOI: 10.3390/cancers14071612
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