Portable air-fed cold atmospheric plasma device for postsurgical cancer treatment

Surgery represents the major option for treating most solid tumors. Despite continuous improvements in surgical techniques, cancer recurrence after surgical resection remains the most common cause of treatment failure. Here, we report cold atmospheric plasma (CAP)-mediated postsurgical cancer treatment, using a portable air-fed CAP (aCAP) device. The aCAP device we developed uses the local ambient air as the source gas to generate cold plasma discharge with only joule energy level electrical input, thus providing a device that is simple and highly tunable for a wide range of biomedical applications. We demonstrate that local aCAP treatment on residual tumor cells at the surgical cavities effectively induces cancer immunogenic cell death in situ and evokes strong T cell-mediated immune responses to combat the residual tumor cells. In both 4T1 breast tumor and B16F10 melanoma models, aCAP treatment after incomplete tumor resection contributes to inhibiting tumor growth and prolonging survival.

Automated summary

The cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) post-surgical treatment effectively induces immunogenic cell death in residual tumor cells and evokes T cell-mediated immune responses to combat them, contributing to tumor growth inhibition and prolonged survival in cancer models.