Experts from many countries of the world continue to look for ways to fight a deadly disease – cancer! Staff of the Inna Foundation continue to inform their readers about the most interesting and promising, in our opinion, discoveries.
The specialized portal Scitech Daily reports that a group of scientists from the University of Michigan (USA) proposes to use a non-invasive sound technology that destroys malignant tumors to fight cancer cells. This method is called histotripsy.
The idea of the proposed method lies in the non-invasive focusing of ultrasonic waves for mechanical destruction of the target tissue with an accuracy of up to a millimeter. Experiments on laboratory rats showed excellent results! So, for example, when destroying even 50% – 75% of the volume of a liver tumor, the immune system of rats was able to cope with the rest of the tumor on its own! And this result is shown in more than 80% of animals from the control group.
Zhen Xu, professor of biomedical engineering and lead researcher, said: “Even if we don’t target the entire tumor, we can still cause the tumor to regress and also reduce the risk of future metastasis.”
More importantly, high amplitude ultrasonic pulses of microsecond duration (acoustic cavitation) work without harmful side effects to the body, unlike modern methods such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy.
For information – liver cancer is a very aggressive and life-threatening disease! In Ukraine, mortality from this type of cancer, according to official data, is almost 80%! However, in other countries, the survival rate for liver cancer is not much higher!
The authors of the study believe that histotripsy is a promising option to help overcome the limitations of currently available treatments and provide safe and effective non-invasive removal of liver cancer.
