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 metastatic cancer. 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 several therapeutic effects that are being evaluated.
One mechanism is the precise ablation (thermal destruction of tissue), which enables metastatic cancer to be treated without surgery. This destruction can be done to completely destroy the target or to partially treat it, and partial treatment is believed to stimulate the patient’s immune response, which may have a broader impact.
Another mechanism is to produce local hyperthermia of the targeted tissue, which can have a variety of beneficial effects including the release of chemotherapy drugs that are contained in temperature sensitive molecules. This allows delivery of a higher level of chemotherapy precisely to the targeted tissue, while limiting the effects for the rest of the body. Hyperthermia can also increase the absorption of the therapeutic agents to the targeted tissue.
Advantages
The primary options for treatment of metastatic disease are medication or 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. Focused ultrasound may also enhance chemotherapy impact to the target, with less impact to the rest of the body
Clinical Trials
One clinical trial – in patients up to 30 years of age – is using thermosensitive liposomal Doxorubicin that is administered intravenously, and is only released in the tumor where focused ultrasound is applied. This can improve the penetration of the doxorubicin to the cancer, while limiting the exposure to the rest of the body.
A second study is treating a variety of solid tumors.
A third study is assessing focused ultrasound in treating a number of malignancies in the pelvis.
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/.
Regulatory Approval and Reimbursement
Focused ultrasound treatment for these metastatic cancers are not approved by regulatory bodies or covered by medical insurance companies.
Notable Papers
Hu C, Li H, Deng T, Liu Z, Yang L, Peng L, Jiang MY, Chen WZ. Abscopal effect of focused ultrasound combined immunotherapy in animal solid tumor model: a systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Front Immunol. 2024 Dec 13;15:1474343. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1474343. eCollection 2024. PMID: 39735534
Schwartz MR, Debski AC, Price RJ. Ultrasound-targeted nucleic acid delivery for solid tumor therapy. J Control Release. 2021 Oct 14;339:531-546. doi: 10.1016/j.jconrel.2021.10.010.
Souri M, Soltani M, Moradi Kashkooli F. Computational modeling of thermal combination therapies by magneto-ultrasonic heating to enhance drug delivery to solid tumors. Sci Rep. 2021 Oct 1;11(1):19539. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-98554-z.
Tonguc T, Strunk H, Gonzalez-Carmona MA, Recker F, Lütjohann D, Thudium M, Conrad R, Becher MU, Savchenko O, Davidova D, Luechters G, Mustea A, Strassburg CP, Attenberger U, Pieper CC, Jenne J, Marinova M. US-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) of abdominal tumors: outcome, early ablation-related laboratory changes and inflammatory reaction. A single-center experience from Germany. Int J Hyperthermia. 2021 Sep;38(2):65-74. doi: 10.1080/02656736.2021.1900926.
Click here for additional references from PubMed.