Towards in vivo immunotherapy using high intensity focused ultraosund

Abstract

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has been regarded as an appealing anti-cancer treatment for over a decade. HIFU indeed offers a combination of unique advantages: it is non-invasive and capable of delivering a precise and local thermal or mechanical dose without affecting the surrounding healthy tissue. HIFU is therefore already being applied as a cancer treatment in the clinics, although mostly as a thermal modality. On the other hand, immunotherapy has demonstrated remarkable promise for durable cancer treatment. However, its cost and complexity are prohibitive. Here, we evaluate (moderate) mechanical HIFU treatment and its capacity to induce immunogenic cell death with the aim to achieve immunotherapy treatment, directly in vivo. To that end, we treat a full lummox dish using an automatic scanning setup. Immunogenic cell death is monitored via distinct biomolecular markers (ATP secretion, HMGB1 secretion, calreticulin exposure). Cavitation activity is monitored via passive cavitation detection. Beyond the correspondence between acoustic cavitation and immunogenic cell death, our results also show a major influence of the cell type, namely, standard CT26 or B16F1O cells.