66th Annual Gaseous Electronics Conference
Volume 58, Number 8
Monday–Friday, September 30–October 4 2013;
Princeton, New Jersey
Session LW3: Biomedical Applications I
3:30 PM–5:30 PM,
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Room: Nassau Room
Chair: Alexander Fridman, Drexel University
Abstract ID: BAPS.2013.GEC.LW3.1
Abstract: LW3.00001 : Physics and medical applications of cold atmospheric plasma
3:30 PM–4:00 PM
Preview Abstract
Abstract
Author:
Michael Keidar
(George Washington University)
Recent progress in atmospheric plasmas led to the creation of cold plasmas
with ion temperature close to room temperature. Varieties of novel plasma
diagnostic techniques were applied in a quest to understand physics of cold
plasmas. In particular it was established that the streamer head charge is
about 10$^{8}$ electrons, the electrical field in the head vicinity
is about 10$^{7}$ V/m, and the electron density of the streamer
column is about 10$^{19}$ m$^{3}$.
We have demonstrated the efficacy of cold plasma in a pre-clinical model of
various cancer types (lung, bladder, breast, head, neck, brain and skin).
Both \textit{in-vitro} and\textit{ in-vivo} studies revealed that cold plasmas selectively kill cancer cells.
We showed that: (a) cold plasma application selectively eradicates cancer
cells in vitro without damaging normal cells. (b) Significantly reduced
tumor size \textit{in viv}o. Cold plasma treatment led to tumor ablation with neighbouring
tumors unaffected. These experiments were performed on more than 10 mice
with the same outcome. We found that tumors of about 5mm in diameter were
ablated after 2 min of single time plasma treatment. The two best known cold
plasma effects, plasma-induced apoptosis and the decrease of cell migration
velocity can have important implications in cancer treatment by localizing
the affected area of the tissue and by decreasing metastasic development. In
addition, cold plasma treatment has affected the cell cycle of cancer cells.
In particular, cold plasmainduces a 2-fold increase in cells at the
G2/M-checkpoint in both papilloma and carcinoma cells at $\sim$24
hours after treatment, while normal epithelial cells (WTK) did not show
significant differences. It was shown that reactive oxygen species
metabolism and oxidative stress responsive genes are deregulated. We
investigated the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) with cold
plasma treatment as a potential mechanism for the tumor ablation observed.
To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2013.GEC.LW3.1