4 ms·

Could this work against any/most cancers?

• mrinterweb 3y ago
  That's the impression I was getting from reading the article and other articles related to histotripsy. Still, it sounds too good to be true, so I'm wondering the same thing.
  • DoesntMatter22 3y ago
    I was a little confused on why they can't use it on her other tumors that are growing in her liver.
• nicwilson 3y ago
  It won't work for liquid tumours (i.e. blood cancers) since they "metastasise" to the whole vein/artery network. Cancers in the brain/lungs/bone, unlikely, since the speed of sound is very different between bone/air and flesh. Though I could be wrong. But for any solid tumour, it should work well.
  • pazimzadeh 3y ago
    Not every tissue passes ultrasound as well as the liver so it might need fine tuning for different tissues. The liver also regenerates a lot faster which probably helps mitigate off-target effects.
    • DennisP 3y ago
      According to the articles, it causes very little off-target damage.
• matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Won't work for metastasized cancers for obvious reasons. Perhaps it will also be limited by bones just like regular ultrasound where their echoes produce shadows. I could be wrong though. Ultrasound in general is also operator dependent: the skill of the human doctor matters. Limits scalability.
  • DennisP 3y ago
    In rodent studies, it actually does help with metastasis. It breaks tumor cells apart in a way that makes them recognizable by the immune system, which goes on to kill other cancer cells throughout the body. We'll have to see what happens long-term in humans treated with it.
    • matheusmoreira 3y ago
      That was unexpected and really interesting. I hope the results turn out to be good.