Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
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Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
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Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#2Dumb question, but isn't there a risk of spreading cancer causing proteins throughout the body with this approach?
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#3Dumb question, but isn't there a risk of spreading cancer causing proteins throughout the body with this approach?
Cancer isn't caused by proteins in the way you might think. Its definitely not infectious at the protein level. You could ask if this disruption spreads out cancer cells themselves and that would be fair to ask. But then the cancer cells were already in your body and were likely trying to migrate to other sites anyway.
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#4Histotripsy means "cell pulverizing". We know disruption (pulverization or otherwise) of a tumor bed tends to incite a local inflammatory reaction, and a brisk inflammatory reaction seems to correlate with survival. So the idea here seems to be an extension of high energy ultrasound methods developed for lithotripsy (breaking up kidney stones) to disrupt tumor beds. Not something I'd want for a pre-cancerous lesion, but if it's stage 4 liver mets ... sure. Have at it.
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#5The machine has been available for a couple years to treat liver tumors. It’s available in several US cities but not widely available. It uses cavitation to destroy the tumor.
https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/histotripsy-for-liver-...
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#6The advancements in imaging, cheap intelligence and non-invasive (mostly) tools like this are amazing. I can easily see a future where we can scan, and analyze, every cell in a body and then selectively manipulate them to achieve the desired effect. I doubt we are actually that far away actually.
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#7Dumb question, but isn't there a risk of spreading cancer causing proteins throughout the body with this approach?
Cancer isn't caused by proteins in the way you might think. Its definitely not infectious at the protein level. You could ask if this disruption spreads out cancer cells themselves and that would be fair to ask. But then the cancer cells were already in your body and were likely trying to migrate to other sites anyway.
Ok, but this might stimulate migration further.
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#8As someone who was recently diagnosed and treated for Uveal Melanoma (get your annual eye exam and retinal scans!), and occasionally struggling with some intrusive thoughts about the potential for liver mets, reading about this treatment brought me so much joy. Bless Zhen Xu!
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#9As someone who was recently diagnosed and treated for Uveal Melanoma (get your annual eye exam and retinal scans!), and occasionally struggling with some intrusive thoughts about the potential for liver mets, reading about this treatment brought me so much joy. Bless Zhen Xu!
Hey, I'm curious, did you have symptoms or did you just find it by chance?
Re: Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
#10What are the chances that breaking up a tumor this way seeds cancer elsewhere in the body? 2024 meta analysis of seeding I didn't see ultrasound in there: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39605885/
Here is a study on AEs specifically from this type of ultrasound: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Quote: "Cavitation detaches cancer cells/emboli from the primary site and thereby releases them into the circulation, leading to metastasis"