[HN Gopher] Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
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Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors
Author : rbanffy
Score : 114 points
Date : 2025-12-22 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| darkerside wrote:
| Dumb question, but isn't there a risk of spreading cancer causing
| proteins throughout the body with this approach?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Cancer isn't caused by proteins in the way you might think. Its
| definitely not infectious at the protein level. You could ask
| if this disruption spreads out cancer cells themselves and that
| would be fair to ask. But then the cancer cells were already in
| your body and were likely trying to migrate to other sites
| anyway.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, but this might stimulate migration further.
| sowbug wrote:
| The success of surgery to remove solid tumors usually
| hinges on whether there are "clean margins," meaning they
| were able to remove all the bad tissue and a little good
| surrounding tissue just to be sure. It's likely that the
| same principle applies using this new procedure: if you
| blast the whole thing and trust the body to clean up the
| mess, hopefully there won't be anything left to worry
| about.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| the article talks about this, the (too vaguely explained) tldr
| is that pulverization allows neoantigens to be exposed to the
| immune system rather than hidden within a tumor. i saw
| elsewhere (weeks ago) an article that this worked excellently,
| but this article seems to not reference it.
|
| this is one such article:
|
| https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2025/11/tricking-tumors-i...
| ramoz wrote:
| > Histotripsy generally seems to stimulate an immune response,
| helping the body attack cancer cells that weren't targeted
| directly by ultrasound. The mechanical destruction of tumors
| likely leaves behind recognizable traces of cancer proteins
| that help the immune system learn to identify and destroy
| similar cells elsewhere in the body, explains Wood. Researchers
| are now exploring ways to pair histotripsy with immunotherapy
| to amplify that effect.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| Histotripsy means "cell pulverizing". We know disruption
| (pulverization or otherwise) of a tumor bed tends to incite a
| local inflammatory reaction, and a brisk inflammatory reaction
| seems to correlate with survival. So the idea here seems to be an
| extension of high energy ultrasound methods developed for
| lithotripsy (breaking up kidney stones) to disrupt tumor beds.
| Not something I'd want for a pre-cancerous lesion, but if it's
| stage 4 liver mets ... sure. Have at it.
| melling wrote:
| The machine has been available for a couple years to treat liver
| tumors. It's available in several US cities but not widely
| available. It uses cavitation to destroy the tumor.
|
| https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/histotripsy-for-liver-...
| jmward01 wrote:
| The advancements in imaging, cheap intelligence and non-invasive
| (mostly) tools like this are amazing. I can easily see a future
| where we can scan, and analyze, every cell in a body and then
| selectively manipulate them to achieve the desired effect. I
| doubt we are actually that far away actually.
| jtbaker wrote:
| As someone who was recently diagnosed and treated for Uveal
| Melanoma (get your annual eye exam and retinal scans!), and
| occasionally struggling with some intrusive thoughts about the
| potential for liver mets, reading about this treatment brought me
| so much joy. Bless Zhen Xu!
| moralestapia wrote:
| Hey, I'm curious, did you have symptoms or did you just find it
| by chance?
| jtbaker wrote:
| no symptoms. first identified the lesion a few years back and
| it hadn't changed over a few subsequent appointments. exam
| this year, it had grown a small amount 5mmx5mm to 6mmx8mm -
| still considered small, but the change was enough for the Drs
| to recommend treatment. I have been treated by Dr. Dan
| Gombos[1] at MD Anderson and received excellent care.
|
| [1] https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/dan_gombos.html
| moralestapia wrote:
| Interesting, thanks.
|
| Best wishes!
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| What are the chances that breaking up a tumor this way seeds
| cancer elsewhere in the body? 2024 meta analysis of seeding I
| didn't see ultrasound in there:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39605885/
|
| Here is a study on AEs specifically from this type of ultrasound:
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| Quote: "Cavitation detaches cancer cells/emboli from the primary
| site and thereby releases them into the circulation, leading to
| metastasis"
| agumonkey wrote:
| It would not be the first therapy that may promote spread while
| curing the primary site. Hopefully there are measures to assess
| the cost / benefits.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| For sure. Goes without saying in any cancer treatment that
| cost/benefit is a prime consideration. Still, that will not
| stop me from asking the question. You can't do that analysis
| without the answers after all.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Stopping you wasn't my intent. I'm just a visitor sharing
| some stuff.
|
| If any medical professional could give answers that would
| be neat.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > What are the chances that breaking up a tumor this way seeds
| cancer elsewhere in the body?
|
| that's discussed in the article
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > The mechanical destruction of tumors likely leaves behind
| recognizable traces of cancer proteins that help the immune
| system learn to identify and destroy similar cells elsewhere in
| the body, explains Wood
|
| Seems a little too speculatively worded, IMO.
| flir wrote:
| If it was true, couldn't you get the same effect by taking a
| biopsy, fragmenting the cells, and injecting them back in?
| Like a vaccination, in fact. Somebody must have studied that
| approach already.
| pedalpete wrote:
| It seems they are initially focused on pancreatic cancer, which
| has a very low survival rate ~14% [1].
|
| In theory, this may mean that metastisizing this tumour could
| destroy it in the pancreas, but allow the cells to spread to
| more treatable locations?
|
| 1 - https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-
| types/pancreatic-c...
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| ?? HistoSonics first target was the liver, second was kidney.
| Pancreas is the third organ they've targeted.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Chemo post-histrophy would remove any lingering cancer cells
| effectively. Cancer cells need lots of fuel or they stop
| replicating, and this is what traditional chemo is great at
| stopping.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| We simply won't know until they do the inevitable phase2/3
| RCTs. They will need to show that this method helps people
| survive longer or with better quality of life than the current
| standard of care.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| HistoSonics has studies published with 50 patients. Their
| upcoming study with 5000 liver patients obviously will give
| more information, but we already have some.
|
| And with that said, these studies are more relevant than the
| top of thread linking to a review from 2011 looking at papers
| from 2005-2006 for ultrasound cavitation causing metastases.
| mcbain wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45514378
| cogman10 wrote:
| Due to some family stuff, this is something I've been
| investigating. My oncologist has said "this will probably be
| standard care in a few years". The results and studies around
| this have been excellent.
|
| What this does better than pretty much anything else is it
| isolates the destruction of cells to just the target. The liver
| is a VERY "bleedy" organ. It has a ton of blood that flows
| through it which makes surgery extra hard. In fact, the not this
| surgery that's next best for our circumstances laparoscopic
| through the arteries to drop a radioactive pellet in the center
| of the cancer.
|
| The non-invasive nature of this is going to be very good for the
| future of cancer treatment. Minimizing scaring and damage to
| tissue is the number 1 factor to better results.
|
| The only reason my local oncologist does not have this machine is
| they are still pretty pricey.
|
| When I first learned about this, I thought it was pseudo-science
| BS. It's crazy what can be done with just sound.
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Per the article, this seems even better than the headline would
| suggest:
|
| > Histotripsy generally seems to stimulate an immune response,
| helping the body attack cancer cells that weren't targeted
| directly by ultrasound. The mechanical destruction of tumors
| likely leaves behind recognizable traces of cancer proteins that
| help the immune system learn to identify and destroy similar
| cells elsewhere in the body, explains Wood. Researchers are now
| exploring ways to pair histotripsy with immunotherapy to amplify
| that effect.
| chaboud wrote:
| I had the opportunity to meet with folks from Histosonics at a
| Canopy Cancer Collective (pancreas cancer focused group -
| https://canopycancer.org/) annual meeting a couple of years ago.
| They had shown very promising results (and approval) with liver
| cancer, and the applicability to any soft-tissue openly-
| addressable masses (e.g., not brains in skulls, not lungs full of
| air) seemed very likely, based on the physics. (Note: I'm a
| consumer electronics and ML engineer, not a medical devices
| engineer).
|
| I'm excited to see this option become more broadly available. The
| ability to precisely target and illicit an inflammatory response
| is impressive, and Whipples are no joke.
| lostsock wrote:
| The awesome "What's your problem" postcast had an episode with
| the CEO of this company recently which I really enjoyed:
| https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/using-sou...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Does this work with lung cancer?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| In general there is a lot of work on ultrasound stimulation now,
| some of it is scary in other ways:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65080-9
|
| which could imaginably lead to wireheading or something like
| Niven's "tasp".
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