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…