Pre-clinical cryosurgery testing in breast cancer treatment
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: This study proposes to establish the use of imaging monitored cryosurgery for treatment of breast cancer. This is an innovative, minimally invasive surgical technique that may have advantages over other surgical techniques by producing excellent medical results, with less distress and disfiguration, at a lower cost. Cryosurgery is a surgical procedure that uses freezing to destroy undesirable tissue. Cryosurgery itself is not new. It began in England over one hundred and fifty years ago, where it was used to treat skin cancer. While the first use of cryosurgery employed brine to freeze tissue, modern procedures are performed with long and thin cylindrical probes cooled internally with liquid nitrogen, insulated except at the tip. In a typical procedure, several probes are inserted, needle-like, through the skin, with the tip in the tumor, and freezing begins from the probe outward, until the tumor is completely frozen. Afterward, the probes are removed and the treated tissue is left in the body to be removed by the immune system. The procedure is simple to perform and, by using several probes, can treat varying sizes, shapes and numbers of individual tumors, while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue. The advantages of cryosurgery are that it is minimally invasive, results in minimal disfiguration, is not dose limited, and is relatively inexpensive.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 During the last twelve years, a collaborative study between the University of California at Berkeley and at San Francisco has produced a breakthrough in cryosurgery. The breakthrough involves using imaging techniques, such as intraoperative ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging, to monitor the process of freezing deep in the tissue with excellent accuracy. This has extended the use of cryosurgery to the treatment of tumors deep in the body, particularly in the liver and prostate, with excellent results. We began applying imaging-monitored cryosurgery to the clinical treatment of cancer eight years ago. During the last three years, over 160 medical centers have begun using imaging monitored cryosurgery and over six thousand patients, primarily with non-operable liver and prostate cancer, have been treated. If the success of using cryosurgery on other tissues is any indication, imaging monitored cryosurgery could potentially become an effective technique for treatment of breast cancer.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In order to apply cryosurgery to breast cancer, it is necessary to establish the process of freezing because freezing itself does not necessarily destroy tissue, as evidenced by the common practice of preserving various cells such as red blood cells and sperm in a frozen state. To ensure destruction, the tissue must be frozen with certain thermal parameters which are different for different types of cells and are not yet known for breast cancer cells. The main goal of this study is to establish the thermal parameters needed for the destruction of human breast cancer by freezing. To this end, the study will pursue three different specific aims. First, we will study various human breast cell lines and determine which thermal parameters are needed to destroy these cells. Then we will study human breast tissue from resection surgery, to determine if the same thermal parameters apply in the tissue itself. Lastly, we will study imaging monitored cryosurgery of tumors in mice. This should help us determine how our studies with cells and resected tissue can be extrapolated to life organisms. The completion of this study will allow us to design a reliable clinical procedure that will be proposed at the end of the two years of this study.