Heat and freeze
A new method of treating pancreatic cancer turned out to be very promising
Pancreatic cancer is a malignant neoplasm that originates from the epithelium of the glandular tissue or ducts of the pancreas. The incidence is increasing every year: now pancreatic cancer ranks sixth in prevalence among oncological diseases, if we take the adult population of the world. At the moment, the disease ranks fourth in terms of mortality in the United States among the causes of death from cancer. The disease mainly affects elderly people: both men and women. Among the main causes of the disease is an unhealthy lifestyle.
All of the above encourages the scientific world to pay more and more attention to this disease: often partial success awaits scientists on the way. Now positive conclusions have been presented by researchers from Binghamton University (USA). The results of the work can be found on the Medicalexpress website, in addition, they are published in the publication Liver and Pancreatic Sciences (Baumann et al., Dual thermal ablation of pancreatic cancer cells as an improved combinatorial treatment strategy).
Scientists have found that successive heating and freezing of pancreatic tumor cells lead to their death, allowing to avoid the recurrence of the tumor. This is important, since early experiments with heating and freezing, although they destroyed some of the cancer cells, they still could not defeat the disease: the survivors led to the appearance of new malignant formations.
During the new experiment, the researchers worked with cultures of cancer cells PANC-1 and BxPC-3: they were heated to a temperature of +45-50 degrees Celsius, and also frozen to -10-20 degrees. At the same time, different processing sequences were used. The analysis carried out seven days later showed almost complete death of cancer cells as a result of necrosis.
Pancreatic cancer cells stained with fluorescent dyes: live cells – green, dead cells – red. Top left – control, top right – freezing, bottom left – heating, bottom right – double thermal ablation. Image: Kenneth W. Baumann.
The scientists themselves believe that the tried method will be used in clinical practice in the future. Experts suggest influencing the tumor with the help of an ultrathin catheter, which is currently being developed by part of the team of scientists.
Earlier, we recall that another team of researchers presented unique nanorobots capable of delivering effective "high-precision" strikes on cancer cells. Among the advantages of the described method is its versatility. The developed nanorobots, in theory, make it possible to fight not only various types of cancer, but also some other dangerous diseases.
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