Abstract
Thermal plasmas and lasers have been widely used in medicine to cut, ablate and cauterize tissues through heating; in contrast, non-thermal plasma produces no heat, so its effects can be selective. In order to exploit the potential for clinical applications, including wound healing, sterilization, blood coagulation, and cancer treatment, a mechanistic understanding of the interaction of non-thermal plasma with living tissues is required. Using mammalian cells in culture, it is shown here that non-thermal plasma created by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) has dose-dependent effects that range from increasing cell proliferation to inducing apoptosis. It is also shown that these effects are primarily due to formation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). We have utilized γ-H2AX to detect DNA damage induced by non-thermal plasma and found that it is initiated by production of active neutral species that most likely induce formation of organic peroxides in cell medium. Phosphorylation of H2AX following non-thermal plasma treatment is ATR dependent and ATM independent, suggesting that plasma treatment may lead to replication arrest or formation of single-stranded DNA breaks; however, plasma does not lead to formation of bulky adducts/thymine dimers.
Highlights
The term plasma in physics refers to a partially ionized medium, usually gas
We demonstrate that non-thermal plasma induces a variety of effects on mammalian cells, ranging from increased cell proliferation to apoptosis, and it leads to DNA damage through formation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS)
In order to test the effects of plasma treatment on mammalian cells, dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma was applied to human breast epithelial
Summary
The term plasma in physics refers to a partially ionized medium, usually gas. Importantly, plasma produces electrons and various ions, and neutral (uncharged) atoms and molecules, such as free radicals and electronically excited atoms having high chemical reactivity and the capability to emit UV. Gas temperature can reach several thousand degrees Kelvin Devices, such as argon plasma coagulators, which are used clinically to cauterize living tissues, typically generate plasmas at temperatures far exceeding room temperature. Electrical discharges that generate non-thermal plasma have been known for a long time, their clinical potential has been largely ignored and until recently, applications have been confined to sterilization of inert surfaces [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] or modulation of cell attachment [12,13] through surface modification. An understanding of mechanisms by which non-thermal plasma interacts with living cells and tissues is required to fully develop its clinical applications
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