Nowadays, tumor hypoxia has become a more predominant problem for diagnosis as well as treatment
of cancer due to difficulties in delivering chemotherapeutic drugs
and their carriers to these regions with reduced vasculature and oxygen
supply. In such cases, external physical stimulus-mediated drug delivery,
such as ultrasound and magnetic fields, would be effective. In this
work, the effect of simultaneous exposure of low-intensity pulsed
ultrasound and static magnetic field on colon (HCT116) and hepatocellular
(HepG2) carcinoma cell inhibition was assessed in vitro. The treatment,
in the presence of anticancer drug, with and without magnetic carrier,
significantly increased the reactive oxygen species production and
hyperpolarized the cancer cells. As a result, a significant increase
in cell inhibition, up to 86%, was observed compared to 50% inhibition
with bare anticancer drug. The treatment appears to have relatively
more effect on HepG2 cells during the initial 24 h than on HCT116
cells. The proposed treatment was also found to reduce cancer cell
necrosis and did not show any inhibitory effect on healthy cells (MC3T3).
Our in vitro results suggest that this approach has strong application
potential to treat cancer at lower drug dosage to achieve similar
inhibition and can reduce health risks associated with drugs.