Novel/Unconventional Methods for Cancer Treatment (2)

(2) Using Heat therapy (Hyperthermia) to Kill Cancer Cells

Heat therapy is a method to use heat to treat diseases. There are a number of methods to generate/deliver heat for therapeutic purpose. For example, ultrasound has been used as a tool to generate the required heat to kill cancer cells. Heat can also be transferred by a thin needle inserted into a tumor.

If you remember, we talked about the potential of heat to damage DNA. Given sufficient heat, DNA replication can be hampered and the cells will stop the replication or die. This is one of the reasons how heat therapy can be used in cancer treatment.

Heat therapy in cancer can be divided into two general classes, local and regional hyperthermia. In local hyperthermia, very high temperature is used to destroy a small area of tumor cells by coagulating the proteins and destroying the nearby blood vessels. If the treatment time is long enough, DNA/cell replication could also be affected. In regional hyperthermia, the temperature of a portion of the body is raised a few degrees higher than normal.

Most of the time, hyperthermia is used in combination with other treatments, such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Simply put, all cells grow better at certain range of temperature. If the temperature becomes too high, the cells may not survive. Logically, when cancer cells die of heat, some surrounding normal cells may be damaged or die, too. Theoretically, this method should work well. However, similar to most anticancer treatments, the technical hurdle of heat therapy is how to kill cancer cells while minimizing the damage to normal cells. 

All contents posted in this blog are extracted from the book "IS CANCER IN US", available at Amazon.

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