Improving anti-tumor immunity has promising outcomes in eradicating malignant tumors. Tumor cells can escape from immune surveillance and killing; therefore, various strategies are continuously developing to inhibit immune escape. Focused ultrasound (FUS) has recently emerged to play an important role in immune modulation. After FUS therapy, various tumor antigens and related signals are released. The non-thermal effect of FUS strengthens the blood and lymph circulation, increases cell permeability, and helps in crossing the physical barrier like the blood-brain barrier and blood-tumor barrier. However, the different ablation of FUS is proposed to have a different anti-tumor immune effect. Therefore, we categorized the FUS ablation into thermal and non-thermal ablation and summarized possible anti-tumor immunity mechanisms.
Keywords: Anti-tumor immunity; Bioeffect; Focused ultrasound; Non-thermal ablation; Thermal ablation.
© 2022. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Japan Society of Clinical Oncology.