Dayun Yan

Principles of using Cold Atmospheric Plasma Stimulated Media for Cancer Treatment.

To date, the significant anti-cancer capacity of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) on dozens of cancer cell lines has been demonstrated in vitro and in mice models. Conventionally, CAP was directly applied to irradiate cancer cells or tumor tissue. Over past three years, the CAP irradiated media was also found to kill cancer cells as effectively as the direct CAP treatment. As a novel strategy, using the CAP stimulated (CAPs) media has become a promising anti-cancer tool. In this study, we demonstrated several principles to optimize the anti-cancer capacity of the CAPs media on glioblastoma cells and breast cancer cells. Specifically, using larger wells on a multi-well plate, smaller gaps between the plasma source and the media, and smaller media volume enabled us to obtain a stronger anti-cancer CAPs media composition without increasing the treatment time. Furthermore, cysteine was the main target of effective reactive species in the CAPs media. Glioblastoma cells were more resistant to the CAPs media than breast cancer cells. Glioblastoma cells consumed the effective reactive species faster than breast cancer cells did. In contrast to nitric oxide, hydrogen peroxide was more likely to be the effective reactive species.

Cold atmospheric plasma, a novel promising anti-cancer treatment modality

Over the past decade, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), a near room temperature ionized gas has shown its promising application in cancer therapy. Two CAP devices, namely dielectric barrier discharge and plasma jet, show significantly anti-cancer capacity over dozens of cancer cell lines in vitro and several subcutaneous xenograft tumors in vivo. In contrast to conventional anti-cancer approaches and drugs, CAP is a selective anti-cancer treatment modality. Thus far establishing the chemical and molecular mechanism of the anti-cancer capacity of CAP is far from complete. In this review, we provide a comprehensive introduction of the basics of CAP, state of the art research in this field, the primary challenges, and future directions to cancer biologists.

Controlling plasma stimulated media in cancer treatment application

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) constitutes a “cocktail” of various reactive species. Accumulating evidence shows the effectiveness of CAP in killing cancer cells and decreasing the tumor size, which provides a solid basis for its potential use in cancer treatment. Currently, CAP is mainly used to directly treat cancer cells and trigger the death of cancer cells via apoptosis or necrosis. By altering the concentration of fetal bovine serum in Dulbeccos modified Eagles medium and the temperature to store CAP stimulated media, we demonstrated controllable strategies to harness the stimulated media to kill glioblastoma cells in vitro. This study demonstrated the significant role of media in killing cancer cells via the CAP treatment.

Synergistic effect of gold nanoparticles and cold plasma on glioblastoma cancer therapy

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been investigated as a promising reagent for cancer therapy in various fields. In the meantime, cold atmospheric plasma has shown exquisite selectivity towards cancer cells. In this paper, we demonstrate that there is a synergy between gold nanoparticles and cold atmospheric plasma in cancer therapy. Specifically, the concentration of AuNPs plays an important role on plasma therapy. At an optimal concentration, gold nanoparticles can significantly induce glioblastoma (U87) cell death up to a 30% overall increase compared to the control group with the same plasma dosage but no AuNPs applied. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) intensity of the corresponding conditions has a reversed trend compared to cell viability. This matches with the theory that intracellular ROS accumulation results in oxidative stress, which further changes the intracellular pathways, causing damage to the proteins, lipids and DNA. Our results show that this synergy has great potential in improving the efficiency of cancer therapy and reducing harm to normal cells.

Toward understanding the selective anticancer capacity of cold atmospheric plasma—A model based on aquaporins (Review)

Selectively treating tumor cells is the ongoing challenge of modern cancer therapy. Recently, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), a near room-temperature ionized gas, has been demonstrated to exhibit selective anticancer behavior. However, the mechanism governing such selectivity is still largely unknown. In this review, the authors first summarize the progress that has been made applying CAP as a selective tool for cancer treatment. Then, the key role of aquaporins in the H2O2 transmembrane diffusion is discussed. Finally, a novel model, based on the expression of aquaporins, is proposed to explain why cancer cells respond to CAP treatment with a greater rise in reactive oxygen species than homologous normal cells. Cancer cells tend to express more aquaporins on their cytoplasmic membranes, which may cause the H2O2 uptake speed in cancer cells to be faster than in normal cells. As a result, CAP treatment kills cancer cells more easily than normal cells. Our preliminary observations indicated that glioblastoma cells consumed H2O2 much faster than did astrocytes in either the CAP-treated or H2O2-rich media, which supported the selective model based on aquaporins.

Stabilizing the cold plasma-stimulated medium by regulating medium's composition

Over past several years, the cold plasma-stimulated medium (PSM) has shown its remarkable anti-cancer capacity in par with the direct cold plasma irradiation on cancer cells or tumor tissues. Independent of the cold plasma device, PSM has noticeable advantage of being a flexible platform in cancer treatment. Currently, the largest disadvantage of PSM is its degradation during the storage over a wide temperature range. So far, to stabilize PSM, it must be remained frozen at −80 °C. In this study, we first reveal that the degradation of PSM is mainly due to the reaction between the reactive species and specific amino acids; mainly cysteine and methionine in medium. Based on this finding, both H2O2 in PSM and the anti-cancer capacity of PSM can be significantly stabilized during the storage at 8 °C and −25 °C for at least 3 days by using phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and cysteine/methionine-free Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM). In addition, we demonstrate that adding a tyrosine derivative, 3-Nitro-L-tyrosine, into DMEM can mitigate the degradation of PSM at 8 °C during 3 days of storage. This study provides a solid foundation for the future anti-cancer application of PSM.

Synergistic Effect of Cold Atmospheric Plasma and Drug Loaded Core-shell Nanoparticles on Inhibiting Breast Cancer Cell Growth

Nano-based drug delivery devices allowing for effective and sustained targeted delivery of therapeutic agents to solid tumors have revolutionized cancer treatment. As an emerging biomedical technique, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), an ionized non-thermal gas mixture composed of various reactive oxygen species, reactive nitrogen species, and UV photons, shows great potential for cancer treatment. Here we seek to develop a new dual cancer therapeutic method by integrating promising CAP and novel drug loaded core-shell nanoparticles and evaluate its underlying mechanism for targeted breast cancer treatment. For this purpose, core-shell nanoparticles were synthesized via co-axial electrospraying. Biocompatible poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) was selected as the polymer shell to encapsulate anti-cancer therapeutics. Results demonstrated uniform size distribution and high drug encapsulation efficacy of the electrosprayed nanoparticles. Cell studies demonstrated the effectiveness of drug loaded nanoparticles and CAP for synergistic inhibition of breast cancer cell growth when compared to each treatment separately. Importantly, we found CAP induced down-regulation of metastasis related gene expression (VEGF, MTDH, MMP9, and MMP2) as well as facilitated drug loaded nanoparticle uptake which may aid in minimizing drug resistance-a major problem in chemotherapy. Thus, the integration of CAP and drug encapsulated nanoparticles provides a promising tool for the development of a new cancer treatment strategy.

The Specific Vulnerabilities of Cancer Cells to the Cold Atmospheric Plasma-Stimulated Solutions

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), a novel promising anti-cancer modality, has shown its selective anti-cancer capacity on dozens of cancer cell lines in vitro and on subcutaneous xenograft tumors in mice. Over the past five years, the CAP-stimulated solutions (PSS) have also shown their selective anti-cancer effect over different cancers in vitro and in vivo. The solutions used to make PSS include several bio-adaptable solutions, mainly cell culture medium and simple buffered solutions. Both the CAP-stimulated medium (PSM) and the CAP-stimulated buffered solution (PSB) are able to significantly kill cancer cells in vitro. In this study, we systematically compared the anti-cancer effect of PSM and PSB over pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells and glioblastoma cells. We demonstrated that pancreatic cancer cells and glioblastoma cells were specifically vulnerable to PSM and PSB, respectively. The specific response such as the rise of intracellular reactive oxygen species of two cancer cell lines to the H2O2-containing environments might result in the specific vulnerabilities to PSM and PSB. In addition, we demonstrated a basic guideline that the toxicity of PSS on cancer cells could be significantly modulated through controlling the dilutability of solution.

The strong anti-glioblastoma capacity of the plasma-stimulated lysine-rich medium

Plasma-stimulated medium (PSM) shows a remarkable anti-cancer capacity as strong as the direct cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) treatment of cancer cells. PSM is able to effectively resist the growth of several cancer cell lines. To date, the sole approach to strengthen the anti-cancer capacity of PSM is extending the plasma treatment time. In this study, we demonstrated that the anti-glioblastoma capacity of PSM could be significantly increased by adding 20 mM lysine in Dulbeccos modified Eagles medium (DMEM). This study provides clear evidence that the anti-glioblastoma capacity of PSM could be noticeably enhanced by modifying the composition of medium without increasing the CAP treatment time.

Plasmas for Treating Cancer: Opportunities for Adaptive and Self-Adaptive Approaches

Plasma is an ionized gas that is typically formed under high-temperature laboratory conditions. Recent progress in atmospheric plasmas has led to cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) devices with ion temperatures close to room temperature. The unique chemical and physical properties of CAP have led to its use in various biomedical applications including cancer therapy. CAP exhibits a spontaneous transition from a spatially homogeneous state to a modifiable pattern that is subject to self-organization. In this Opinion article, we discuss some new applications for plasma in cancer therapy based on plasma self-organization, which enables adaptive features in plasma-based therapeutic systems.