Program Information
MR-Guided Non-Thermal Pulsed Focused Ultrasound for Cancer Therapy
C Ma*, B Wang , D Cvetkovic , L Chen , Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA
Presentations
SU-F-J-216 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose: High-intensity focused ultrasound has been investigated for ablative therapy and drug enhancement for gene therapy and chemotherapy. The aim of this work is to explore the feasibility of pulsed focused ultrasound (pFUS) for non-thermal cancer therapy using an in vivo animal model.
Methods: An InSightec ExAblate 2000 with a 1.5T GE MR scanner was used in this study. Suitable ultrasound parameters were investigated to perform non-thermal sonications. LNCaP human prostate tumor cells (106) were injected orthotopically in the prostates of nude mice (n = 16). When tumors reached the volume of 88 ± 18 mm3 as measured on MRI, the tumor-bearing mice (n = 10) were treated with pFUS (1 MHz frequency; 25 W acoustic power; 0.1 duty cycle; 60 sec duration) 4 times in 2 weeks. A total of 6-12 sonications were used to cover the entire tumor volume under MR image guidance. The animals were allowed to survive for 4 weeks after the initial treatment. The tumor volume was measured on MRI weekly post treatment and was compared with that of the control group (n = 6).
Results: Significant tumor growth delay was observed in the tumor-bearing mice treated with pFUS. The mean tumor volume for the pFUS treated mice grew from 1 to 1.18 and 1.81 at 1 week and 2 weeks after the initial treatment, respectively, while the mean tumor volume of the control mice grew from 1 to 1.67 and 2.78, respectively, over the same time periods. These results are statistically significant and are consistent with our previous findings.
Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that non-thermal pFUS has a great potential for cancer therapy. Further experiments are needed to understand the cell killing mechanisms of pFUS and to derive optimal ultrasound parameters and fractionation schemes to maximize the therapeutic effect of pFUS.
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