AVS 66th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Plasma Science and Technology Division Monday Sessions
       Session PS1-MoA

Invited Paper PS1-MoA10
Cold Plasma Jets, Liquids and Biomaterials for Bone Cancer Therapy

Monday, October 21, 2019, 4:40 pm, Room B131

Session: Plasma-Liquid Interactions, Medicine, and Agriculture
Presenter: Cristina Canal, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Correspondent: Click to Email
Over the last few years, significant attention has been paid to biomedical applications of Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas (APP), and especially to the involvement of reactive species (RONS) in selective cancer cell death [1] without damaging surrounding healthy tissues [2]. The anti-cancer properties of the APP have been described in many cancer cell lines, such as breast, skin, lung, pancreas, brain cancers among others and only more recently in bone cancer cells [3-4]. The biological effects of plasmas have been observed also in a wide variety of plasma activated liquids (PAM) [5], opening the door for minimally invasive therapies.

Despite being rare, Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary bone tumorbeing the most common solid tumor in teenagers and the third most common malignancy in children. Our research focuses on the effects of plasmas on osteosarcoma.

We have investigated the effects of different plasma jets in the generation of RONS in liquids of biological interest. OS cells show higher sensitivity to PAM treatment than healthy cells, activating apoptosis, DNA damage and deregulating cellular pathways mediated by c-JUN, AKT, AMPK or STAT3 [6].

However, injection of a liquid in the body associates it being washed away by the blood flow, so development of efficient vehicles which allow location and delivery of RONS to the diseased site is lacking. Therefore, it is our interest to elucidate the potential of hydrogels to generate and store RONS generated by plasmas. Hydrogels are highly hydrated networks of cross-linked polymer chains whose features such as biocompatibility make them great candidates for the design of advanced biomaterials.

We will discuss different hydrogels; in general, their physic-chemical properties remain unchanged by the plasma treatment, while the hydrogels show several-fold larger capacity for generation of RONS than a typical PAM – the absolute amounts generated depending a lot on the chemistry of the hydrogel. The hydrogels show different capacity for release of RONS depending on their properties. The plasma-treated hydrogels show efficient killing of OS cells, related to the different RONS generated.

Acknowledgement. This project has received funding from ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No714793).

1. X. Lu et al, Physics Reports, 630, 1 (2016).

2. M. Keidar et al, Physics of Plasmas, 20, 57101 (2013)

3. C. Canal et al, Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 110, 72 (2017)

4. D. Gümbel et al, Anticancer Research, 36, 5915-5922 (2016)

5. A. Khlyustova et al, Frontiers Chem. Sci. Eng. (2019)

6. J. Tornin et al, Scientific Reports (Under revision 2019)