Towards the Use of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound to More Precisely Destroy Tumor Tissue

Focused ultrasound is one of the many approaches used to directly kill cancer cells once they have grown to the point at which a tumor can be identified. It involves generating sufficient heat to kill cells, a fairly direct transfer of energy. Pruning back cancerous tissue is helpful, as tumors manipulate the signaling environment to subvert the immune system's ability to destroy cancerous cells, and constantly generate new mutations that ultimately lead to metastasis and the spread of a cancer throughout the body. Removing tumor tissue in this way is not a cure, however. Curing cancer requires not just the removal of bulk tumors, but also other means that can be deployed to destroy all lingering or metastasized cancerous cells, any small collection of which can start up a tumor once again. The challenge inherent in any mechanical or radiation based removal of tumors is that it is rarely complete enough to prevent recurrence, while the challenge inherent in any small molecule, gene therapy, immunotherapy, or other similar systemically delivered approach is that tumor masses are a different and tougher target than distributed cancer cells. Ultrasound ablation of tumor tissue has the advantage of avoiding surgery, but the disadvantage of causing just as much collateral damage to tissues as surgery. Today's research materials discuss ways to minimize that damage, by minimizing cavitation, the formation of heated microbubbles that can spread to destroy tissue surrou...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs