Portable air-fed cold atmospheric plasma device for postsurgical cancer treatment

Guojun Chen; Zhitong Chen; Zejun Wang; Richard Obenchain; Di Wen; Hongjun Li; Richard E Wirz; Zhen Gu

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abg5686

Portable air-fed cold atmospheric plasma device for postsurgical cancer treatment

Sci Adv. 2021 Sep 3;7(36):eabg5686. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abg5686. Epub 2021 Sep 1.

Authors

Guojun Chen^{1

2

3}, Zhitong Chen^{4

5}, Zejun Wang^{1

2}, Richard Obenchain⁴, Di Wen^{1

2}, Hongjun Li^{1

2

6}, Richard E Wirz⁴, Zhen Gu^{1

2

6

7

8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
² California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
³ Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Research Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1A3, Canada.
⁴ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁵ National Innovation Center for Advanced Medical Devices, Shenzhen 518000, China.
⁶ College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
⁷ Zhejiang Laboratory of Systems and Precision Medicine, Zhejiang University Medical Center, Hangzhou, China.
⁸ Department of General Surgery, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁹ MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Surgery represents the major option for treating most solid tumors. Despite continuous improvements in surgical techniques, cancer recurrence after surgical resection remains the most common cause of treatment failure. Here, we report cold atmospheric plasma (CAP)–mediated postsurgical cancer treatment, using a portable air-fed CAP (aCAP) device. The aCAP device we developed uses the local ambient air as the source gas to generate cold plasma discharge with only joule energy level electrical input, thus providing a device that is simple and highly tunable for a wide range of biomedical applications. We demonstrate that local aCAP treatment on residual tumor cells at the surgical cavities effectively induces cancer immunogenic cell death in situ and evokes strong T cell–mediated immune responses to combat the residual tumor cells. In both 4T1 breast tumor and B16F10 melanoma models, aCAP treatment after incomplete tumor resection contributes to inhibiting tumor growth and prolonging survival.

Grants and funding

R01 CA234343/CA/NCI NIH HHS/United States