Plasma Medical Science for Cancer Therapy: Toward Cancer Therapy Using Nonthermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma

Abstract

We have been developing novel ultrahigh density atmospheric pressure plasma sources and succeeded in the selective killing ovarian cancer cells against normal ones. Furthermore, we have found out the plasma-activated medium (PAM) also killed glioblastoma brain tumor cells selectively against normal ones and the chemical products in the PAM have long lifetime healing effects. To clarify the mechanism, interactions of plasma with the organism and the medium where the organism belongs were investigated on the viewpoint of intracellular molecular mechanism.Index Terms-Cancer therapy, non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma, and plasma-activated medium.

State of the art in medical applications using non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma

“…2, (Tanaka et al 2014b)] and several methods are available for analyzing and measuring physiological reactions caused by plasma.…”

“…Fig. 2 From plasma inputs to physiological outputs (Tanaka et al 2014b). There are many chemical reactions from plasma inputs to physiological outputs.…”

“…Plasma can stimulate the immune system to attack cancer cells by stimulating macrophages and inducing immunogenic cell death in tumor cells. Another approach is PAM, which is broadly defined as medium or solution following exposure to plasma (Tanaka et al , 2014b(Tanaka et al , 2015a2016a). PAM selectively kills cancer cells and induces apoptosis, as demonstrated independently by researchers worldwide (Yan et al 2014;Mohades et al 2015;Judee et al 2016;Kumar et al 2016;Yan et al 2016).…”

“…In vitro experiments have demonstrated that PAM induces apoptosis in several cell lines through various mechanisms (Kieft et al 2006;Tanaka et al 2014b). For example, PAM induced apoptosis by downregulating the survival and proliferation of signaling molecules which are constitutively activated in a glioblastoma cell line (Tanaka et al , 2014a, caused caspase-independent apoptosis in a lung cancer cell line (Adachi et al 2014), elevated intracellular ferrous ion and the generation of hydroxyl radical in a lung cancer cell line (Adachi et al 2016), and caused cell death resulting from liberated intracellular zinc in a neuroblastoma cell line (Hara et al 2015).…”

“…Since the initial reports that described nonthermal atmospheric pressure plasma, many plasma sources have been developed for medical, agricultural, and biological uses (Laroussi 1996;Fridman et al 2008;Isbary et al 2011;von Woedtke et al 2013). The medical applications of plasma include sterilization (Laroussi 1996;Graham and Mielnik 1997;Adler et al 1998;Iseki et al 2010), wound healing (Awakowicz et al 2009;Lademann et al 2010;Isbary et al 2012;Schmidt et al 2013;von Woedtke et al 2013;), blood coagulation (Kalghatgi et al 2007;Miyamoto et al 2016), and cancer treatments (Kieft et al 2004;Vandamme et al 2010;Keidar et al 2011;Jürgen Schlegel and Boxhammer 2013;Tanaka et al 2014b). Plasma medical science is a novel academic field that aims to elucidate the mechanisms of physiological outputs induced by plasma, including diagnosis using plasma, and comprehend the interactions between plasma and gas, liquids, and living bodies.…”