The National Library of Medicine published a paper "A potential new mechanism of action in tumor treatment inducing cancer cell death and its clinical significance"
- Alex Xu
- Aug 1
- 1 min read
Summary ~
Clinicians’ traditional cancer treatment options include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy, which can be used alone or in combination. In addition to ionizing radiation, other physical therapies include photodynamic therapy and heating therapy, as well as a newer approach known as tumor treatment fields (TTFields). TTFields are intermediate frequency, low intensity, alternating electric fields applied to tumor areas and cells through non-invasive arrays. TTFields revolutionizes the treatment of newly diagnosed and recurrent glioblastoma (GBM) as well as unresectable and locally advanced malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). TTFields are believed to kill tumor cells mainly by destroying mitosis; however, studies have shown that TTFields can improve the efficacy of different types of drugs that act directly on mitosis, replication stress and DNA damage pathways. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the mechanism of action of TTFields in detail in order to effectively apply this therapy clinically. Recent research results show that TTFields play a role in different important pathways, such as DNA damage response and replication stress, endoplasmic reticulum stress, membrane permeability, autophagy and immune responses. This review focuses on the potential new mechanisms of TTFields' anti-tumor effect and its significance in completed and ongoing clinical trials and preclinical studies. In addition, this review also explores the advantages of combined application of chemotherapy drugs and radiotherapy with TTFields and future clinical application strategies.