Turning the heat on cancer

Heat therapy (hyperthermia) is an aboriginal traditional medical treatment since ancient Egypt.  Quoted from the Greek Physician, Hippocrates (479-377 B.C.): ‘Those who cannot be cured by medicine can be cured by surgery, those who cannot be cured by surgery can be cured by fire. Those who cannot be cured by fire are indeed incurable’.  Nowadays, raising the temperature of solid tumours has become one of the adjuvant cancer treatments. In this approach, tumour sites are exposed to high temperature (ranging from 41 to 45°C) for a short period that eventually leads to protein denaturation and cell death.  The selection of appropriate approaches for heat delivery to tumour sites is challenging.

During the second Lunchtime Talk Series powered by PechaKucha which was held on 15 June 2021, Dr Ong Yong Sze from the School of Pharmacy mentioned that her research team utilises magnetic nanoparticles which can absorb energy originated from alternating magnetic field to achieve inside-out hyperthermia. As compared to other hyperthermic approaches such as radiation, microwave and high electrical current, magnetic hyperthermia is claimed to be less invasive and exhibit a higher intensity of heating. The research has also demonstrated the addition of magnetic hyperthermia to chemotherapy significantly improved the treatment efficacy in breast cancer cells via induction of a higher percentage of apoptotic cell death.