Focused Ultrasound Therapy
Focused ultrasound is a noninvasive, therapeutic technology with the potential to improve the quality of life and decrease the cost of care for patients with bone tumors. This novel technology focuses beams of ultrasound energy precisely and accurately on targets deep in the body without damaging surrounding normal tissue.
How it Works
Where the beams converge, focused ultrasound produces precise ablation (thermal destruction of tissue) enabling bone tumors to be treated without surgery. Note: there are some specific bone tumors that have their own entry into our website. For osteoid osteoma, multiple myeloma, sacral chordoma, and bone metastases, please see those separate listings.
Advantages
The primary options for treatment of bone tumors include invasive surgery.
For certain patients, focused ultrasound could provide a noninvasive alternative to surgery with less risk of complications – such as surgical wound healing or infection – at a lower cost. It can reach the desired target without damaging surrounding tissue and is repeatable, if necessary.
Clinical Trials
There is a multi-site clinical trial comparing the treatment of osteoid osteoma with magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound vs. radiofrequency ablation.
There is a pediatric and young adult study underway in Washington, DC that involves the use of FUS in combination with a thermally sensitive form of liposomal doxorubicin on a variety of solid tumors.
There is a multisite trial in Europe treating patients with bone metastasis comparing focused ultrasound and radiotherapy (FURTHER).
There is a clinical trial in France treating bone metastatic lesions and osteoid osteoma.
There is a clinical trial in Taiwan using focused ultrasound to treat painful bone metastatic lesions.
There is a clinical trial in Switzerland using the combination of focused ultrasound and hyperthermia to treat painful bone metastatic lesions.
The Foundation updates these pages regularly, but with the increasing number of clinical trials, we want to be sure that our audience has the latest information available. Therefore, we also added the website search information for the above trials. If you click here, it will take you to the latest information available from https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/.
See a list of treatment sites >
See a list of clinical trials sites >
See a list of laboratory research sites >
Regulatory Approval and Reimbursement
Bone tumor treatment is approved in Europe, Russia, and China. It is not approved in the United States.
Notable Papers
Hay AN, Imran KM, Hendricks-Wenger A, Gannon JM, Sereno J, Simon A, Lopez VA, Coutermarsh-Ott S, Vlaisavljevich E, Allen IC, Tuohy JL. Ablative and Immunostimulatory Effects of Histotripsy Ablation in a Murine Osteosarcoma Model. Biomedicines. 2023 Oct 9;11(10):2737. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines11102737. PMID: 37893110
Napoli A, De Maio A, Alfieri G, Gasperini C, Scipione R, Campanacci L, Siepe G, De Felice F, Siniscalchi B, Chiurchioni L, Tombolini V, Donati DM, Morganti AG, Ghanouni P, Catalano C, Bazzocchi A. Focused Ultrasound and External Beam Radiation Therapy for Painful Bone Metastases: A Phase II Clinical Trial. Radiology. 2023 Apr;307(2):e211857. doi: 10.1148/radiol.211857. Epub 2023 Jan 3.
Zoccali C, Novello M, Arrigoni F, Scotto di Uccio A, Attala D, Ferraresi V. Osteoblastoma: When the Treatment Is Not Minimally Invasive, an Overview. J Clin Med. 2021 Oct 10;10(20):4645. doi: 10.3390/jcm10204645.
Click here for additional references from PubMed.