Oncotripsy: Targeting cancer cells selectively via resonant harmonic excitation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel ultrasound-based technique called oncotripsy that selectively destroys cancer cells by exploiting their unique resonant frequencies, leaving healthy cells unaffected.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed cell model and demonstrates that cancer cells can be selectively lysed through resonant harmonic excitation, validated by nonlinear transient simulations.

Findings

Cancer cells have distinct resonant frequencies from healthy cells.

Selective lysis of cancer cells is achievable with tuned ultrasound excitation.

Healthy cells remain unaffected under the same conditions.

Abstract

We investigate a method of selectively targeting cancer cells by means of ultrasound harmonic excitation at their resonance frequency, which we refer to as oncotripsy. The geometric model of the cells takes into account the cytoplasm, nucleus and nucleolus, as well as the plasma membrane and nuclear envelope. Material properties are varied within a pathophysiologically-relevant range. A first modal analysis reveals the existence of a spectral gap between the natural frequencies and, most importantly, resonant growth rates of healthy and cancerous cells. The results of the modal analysis are verified by simulating the fully-nonlinear transient response of healthy and cancerous cells at resonance. The fully nonlinear analysis confirms that cancerous cells can be selectively taken to lysis by the application of carefully tuned ultrasound harmonic excitation while simultaneously leaving healthy cells intact.