Ultrasound-Activated Microbubble Cancer Therapy: Ceramide Production Leading to Enhanced Radiation Effect <i>in vitro</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Blood vessels within tumours represent a key component for cancer cell survival. Disruption of these vessels can be achieved by inducing vascular endothelial-cell apoptosis. Moreover, endothelial cell apoptosis has been proven to be enhanced by ceramide-increasing drugs. Herein, we introduce a novel therapeutic approach which uses ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles used in combination with radiation to cause a rapid accumulation of ceramide in endothelial cells in-vitro. We also test this modality directly with other cell types as a general method of killing cancer cells. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), acute myeloid leukemia cells (AML), murine fibrosarcoma cells (KHT-C), prostate cancer cells (PC3), breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) and astrocytes were used to evaluate this mechanism of inducing cell death. Survival was measured by clonogenic assays, and ceramide content was detected using immunohistochemistry. Exposure of cell types to ultrasound-stimulated bubbles alone resulted in increases in ceramide for all cell types and survivals of 12 ± 2%, 65 ± 5%, 83 ± 2%, 58 ± 4%, 58 ± 3%, 18 ± 7% for HUVEC, AML, PC3, MDA, KHT-C and astrocyte cells, respectively. Results from selected cell types involving radiation treatments indicated additive treatment enhancements and increases in intracellular ceramide content one hour after exposure to ultrasound-activated microbubbles and radiation. Endothelial cell survival decreased from 8 ± 1% after 2 Gy of radiation treatment alone and from 12 ± 2% after ultrasound and microbubbles alone, to 1 ± 1% with combined treatment. In Asmase +/+ astrocytes, survival decreased from 56 ± 2% after 2 Gy radiation alone and from 17 ± 7% after ultrasound and microbubbles alone, to 5 ± 2% when combined. Using ASMase deficient astrocytes (Asmase -/- ) and Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), we also demonstrate that ultrasound-activated microbubbles stimulate ASMase activity and ceramide production. These findings suggest that ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles could be used as a new biomechanical method to enhance the effects of radiation.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".