Antitumoral effect of non thermal plasmas: results and perspectives
Résumé
Applications of Non Thermal Plasmas (NTP) in biology have grown considerably in recent years. Thanks to developments of atmospheric pressure discharges, new application areas have been opened, especially in the control of hemostasis, treatment of wounds and ulcers or dental care, next to older applications like sterilization or decontamination. Among the recent results obtained, the most striking is probably the evidence of an in vitro and in vivo antitumor effect of cold plasma. In this domain, we first demonstrate an antitumor effect of an in vivo Dielectric Barrier Discharge plasma treatment on U87-luc glioma tumors. Not only the treatment was safe for the animals, but we observed a strong bioluminescence decrease associated with a reduction of tumor volume in U87 glioma-bearing mice. Using a new device developed in the lab, the Plasma Gun [1], which allows plasma treatments at long distance from the discharge reactor, we then demonstrate effect of cold plasmas on heterotopic and orthotopic colon carcinoma [2]. That led to assess the antitumor effect of NTP alone or in combination with Gemcitabine, a reference chemotherapeutic agent with radiosensitizing properties, on pancreatic cancer for which, in most cases, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are only, up to now, palliative treatments. Experiments were carried out using the Plasma Gun both in vitro on MIA PaCa2-luc cell lines (ductal adenocarcinoma cells), then in vivo on orthotopically grafted tumor cells to induce a pancreatic carcinoma model in immune deficient nude mice. The striking results of these series of experiments is that, not only, the plasma treatment appeared more efficient than Gemcitabine alone, but that the combination of both (see Figure 1) led to a most effective tumor growth inhibition (mass reduction of 87 % at Day 36) supporting the possible interest to use NTP in combination with a chemotherapeutical agent