TORONTO – In a world’s first, there is promising research that shows a new way to use ultrasound that makes radiation more effective at smaller doses for treating various cancers.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the method disrupts tumour blood vessels with microscopic bubbles or “microbubbles,” making the radiation treatments much more potent. By treating the “microbubbles” with radiation they resonate and this stimulates the blood vessels inside tumours.
Ultrasound is typically used for imaging. “Microbubbles” pass harmlessly through the body’s circulation system and are normally used as a contrast agent to allow ultrasound to detect cancers.
“Our findings indicate a real possibility for bigger treatment impact at lower radiation doses which would mean less toxicity for patients and potentially less treatments overall,” says Dr. Gregory Czarnota, the study’s lead investigator and scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute.
According to researchers, the experiments within prostate cancer tumours that combined both ultrasound and microbubbles treatments were more effective.
Researchers say human clinical trials could be as close as 12 to 18 months away. They’re conducting pre-clinical studies of similar approaches for bladder and breast cancers and will publish data later this year.
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