Innovative alkaline solution could lead to better cancer treatments
Innovative alkaline solution could lead to better cancer treatments lead image
Cancer is one of the most devastating conditions in the world, with about 10 million deaths reported each year. In recent decades, cold atmospheric plasmas — and their incorporation into aqueous solutions as plasma-activated water — have shown promise as a cancer treatment. However, these solutions degrade within several hours, limiting their clinical applications. Pang et al. developed plasma-activated water that shows significantly higher shelf life than previous attempts.
The authors found the half-life of their solutions were up to 8 times longer than control experiments with up to 14 times more reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, showing increased effectiveness in inhibiting tumor growth. The authors attributed their success to the alkaline nature of their solutions, which prevented degradation by preventing acidification.
“The alkaline plasma-activated water disturbs the acid extracellular milieu, leading to the inhibition of tumor growth and progression,” author Zhijie Liu said. ““Moreover, in our study, the reactive species containing oxygen and nitrogen, which we show to be efficient and durable in alkaline solutions, induce significant cell apoptosis in vitro and in vivo.”
To prepare their samples, the team exposed an acidic solution with a pH of 3, a neutral solution with a pH of 7, and an alkaline solution with a pH of 12 to air surface plasma for periods of time ranging from 1 to 6 minutes. They then measured the concentrations of anticancer oxygen and nitrogen species with a microplate reader and electron spin resonance spectroscopy and determined the anticancer effectiveness of their treatment with cell viability and in vivo fluorescence imaging.
The team plans to investigate the underlying biochemical mechanisms of their treatment in more detail.
Source: “Alkaline Plasma-Activated Water (PAW) as an innovative therapeutic avenue for cancer treatment,” by Bolun Pang, Zhijie Liu, Sitao Wang, Yuting Gao, Miao Qi, Dehui Xu, Renwu Zhou, Dingxin Liu, and Michael G. Kong, Applied Physics Letters (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0107906 .
