Keep Still

Trying to stop cancer spreading is like catching sand in your hands. If any of a tumour’s countless cells break out and start anew in another organ, the consequences can be deadly. Immobilising them altogether would help keep control of the problem. A study examined the potential for low intensity ultrasound – high wavelength sound waves like those used in antenatal scans – to keep cancer cells in their place. The researchers subjected a layer of pancreatic cancer cells to continuous ultrasound for 20 minutes, and watched as the population of cells migrated to repair a wound (video, bottom, compared to untreated cells, top. Cells are coloured according to their direction of travel to help analyse the results). They found that movement was greatly reduced even 2–3 days later. If this approach works in future tests in animals – and eventually people – it could provide an affordable, non-invasive way to stop cancer spreading.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video from work by Itziar González and colleagues
• Group of Ultrasonic Resonators RESULT, Institute of Physical Technologies and Informacion, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, January 2023