Disintegrate tumors with sonic waves!

Have you ever thought about new anti-cancer technologies other than chemotherapy and radiotherapy? If a technique can minimize side effects, the additional physical pain that patients experience during treatment can be significantly reduced

Recently, the University of Michigan has brought a non-invasive sonic anti-cancer technology, which can continuously break down liver tumors in rats

The treatment, also known as histotripsy, is a non-invasive treatment based on focused ultrasound that destroys targeted tissue with millimeter precision, according to the study, published in Cancers

The new technology was originally innovated from conventional ultrasound technology, such as the commonly seen ultrasound imaging technology, which uses sound waves to produce images of the inside of the body

▲Ultrasonic transducer array used in the laboratory (Image source: Reference [1], credit: Marcin Szczepanski, Michigan Engineering)

This pulse creates tiny air bubbles within the target tissue that rapidly expand and collapse within a short period of time, creating enormous localized mechanical stress on the tissue that kills the cells

The research team tested the technology in rats with liver tumors and found that the study could regulate the degree of damage of the ultrasound technology, and only need to destroy 50%-70% of the tumor volume to significantly treat the tumor, Parts of the tumor that were not destroyed were affected, and their viability was significantly reduced, and the rat's immune system was more sensitive to the residual tumor and could directly eliminate the remaining cancer cells

▲ After using the new technology, the tumor volume decreases rapidly, and there is basically no recurrence (Image source: Reference [2])

Eighty percent of the rats treated with ultrasound showed no recurrence or metastasis

No surgery is required throughout the treatment and there are few side effects

References:

[1] Tumors partially destroyed with sound don't come back.

[2] Tejaswi Worlikar et al, Impact of Histotripsy on Development of Intrahepatic Metastases in a Rodent Liver Tumor Model, Cancers (2022).