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Histotripsy: Cancer Treatment that Uses Ultrasound to Break Up Tumors

Pioneered at the University of Michigan over the last two decades, histotripsy offers a promising alternative to cancer treatments such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Watch this video to learn more about the non-invasive cancer treatment that uses ultrasound to break up tumors in the body.

“Histotripsy is an exciting new technology that, although it is in early stages of clinical use, may provide a non-invasive treatment option for patients with liver cancer. Hopefully it can be combined with systemic therapies for a synergistic therapeutic effect,” said Mishal Mendiratta-Lala  , an assistant professor of radiology with Michigan Medicine and principal investigator on the trial at U-M.

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    Transcript

    00:00:01 It was just truly amazing to see it just erasing  the tissue in front of my eyes. That's what it   looked like. Imagine a cancer treatment that  can destroy tumors with nothing but sound.   Histotripsy is a non-invasive interventional   technology that uses ultrasound to  break up the target disease tissue. Pioneered by University of Michigan  researchers and developed for clinical use by   Minneapolis-based company HistoSonics histotripsy  is a promising alternative for cancer treatment.   After a 20-year journey histotripsy could  soon be used to treat liver cancer patients   now that the Food and Drug Administration  cleared the use of HistoSonic's histotripsy   delivery device in hospitals worldwide.  This milestone is something that we've   been marching toward for years now and  we're right at the cusp. Histotripsy as  

    00:00:58 a technique to treat cancer as a combined  technique with systemic and immunotherapies   will hopefully change the future of cancer  treatment. I'm really excited for that. Because it is difficult to detect liver cancer is  often diagnosed in later stages when surgery may   not be an option. That leaves chemotherapy and  radiation treatments but these can cause severe   side effects that may take months to recover from  or even cause long-term damage. Histotripsy offers   an option that homes in far more precisely on  the tumor with minimal recovery for the patient.   Histotripsy actually uses microsecond ultrasound  pulses to activate the nanometer gas pockets in   our body and then generate micro bubbles  and make the micro bubbles expand in the   collapse within very short time frame and that  creates very high mechanical strain and stress   to disrupt the disease cells such as the tumor  cells. There really isn't much of a recovery  

    00:02:04 after you come out of general anesthesia many  patients ask if the procedure was even done   because they don't feel any pain they can  just get up and walk out when they're done.   To show its effectiveness histotripsy was used  to treat patients with primary metastatic liver   tumors across Europe and the United States during  the hope4liver clinical trials. The treatments   were administered using this robotic arm developed  by HistoSonics called the Edison platform.   Much like a traditional ultrasound device it's  positioned over the abdomen where clinicians   can then use the platform to lock onto the  target tumor. We're now at the treatment   stage and everything's automated so the user  will essentially enable the treatment and then   monitor in real time via the ultrasound feedback  as the robot traverses our plan treatment volume. After we discovered the histotripsy phenomenon  we spend a lot of effort in the lab to actually  

    00:03:12 build specialized equipment instrumentation  so that we can really use it in a clinical   setting. The University team in their  diligence showed a great body of research   showing the capability of the therapy and  it was up to us to make it into a product.   This is a treatment region right this  is a dark color ablation zone outside   the spherical region there's no other dark color  zone indicating there's nothing getting damaged. With the success of human trials and now FDA  approval hospitals will be able to purchase   the Edison platform offering histotripsy  as a viable treatment alternative. As we   see cancer affecting younger and younger  patients and often the younger patients   don't have surveillance so when they present  they're already at advanced stage and hopefully   histrotripsy can make a difference in helping  these patients. I'm just really excited to see  

    00:04:19 histotripsy use in a wider patient population.  This will allow us to extend the history Gypsy   in the future for other applications such as  renal tumor pancreatic tumor or even beyond   the cancer such as neurological applications and  the cardiovascular applications. There's just so   many things that this type of technology in this  system has the potential to bring to health care. [Music]