Magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH): Cancer treatment with AC magnetic field induced excitation of biocompatible superparamagnetic nanoparticles

Abstract

The story of hyperthermia with small particles in AC magnetic fields started in the late 1950s, but most of the studies were unfortunately conducted with inadequate animal systems, inexact thermometry and poor AC magnetic field parameters, so that any clinical implication was far behind the horizon.More than three decades later, it was found, that colloidal dispersions of superparamagnetic (subdomain) iron oxide nanoparticles exhibit an extraordinary specific absorption rate (SAR [W/g]), which is much higher at clinically tolerable H0f combinations in comparison to hysteresis heating of larger multidomain particles. This was the renaissance of a cancer treatment method, which has gained more and more attention in the last few years. Due to the increasing number of randomized clinical trials preferentially in Europe with conventional E-field hyperthermia systems, the general medical and physical experience in hyperthermia application is also rapidly growing. Taking this increasing clinical experience carefully into account together with the huge amount of new biological data on heat response of cells and tissues, the approach of magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH) is nowadays more promising than ever before. The present contribution reviews the current state of the art and some of the future perspectives supported by advanced methods of the so-called nanotechnology.