A new paper by a team of Concordia researchers from the departments of Biology and Physics proposes a novel method of fighting cancer tumors that uses ultrasound-guided microbubbles – a technology already widely used in medical imaging and drug delivery.
Writing in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, the researchers describe a process that uses ultrasound to modify the behavior of cancer-fighting T cells by increasing their cell permeability. They examined how this can influence the release of more than 90 kinds of cytokines, a type of signalling molecule crucial for immune response.
The researchers targeted freshly isolated human immune cells with tightly focused ultrasound beams and clinically approved contrast agent microbubbles. When hit with the ultrasound, the bubbles vibrate at extremely high frequency, acting as a push-pull on the walls of the T cell’s membranes. This can mimic the T cell’s natural response to the presence of an antigen. The T cell then begins to secrete vital signaling molecules that would otherwise be restricted by the tumor’s hostile microenvironment. The process does not damage the cell itself.
We’re combining the use of ultrasound and microbubbles to help modulate brain immunology with the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy, which is the harnessing of our own immune cells to fight cancer.”
Brandon Helfield, associate professor of biology and physics and the paper’s supervising author
Reactivating cells
This approach directly confronts one of the major challenges to the body’s natural response to cancer: the tumor’s ability to deactivate T cells from producing cytokines and other