Using sound waves to destroy cancer | Christine Gibbons | TEDxDetroit

good morning show of hands, and I really can't see how many have watched Star Trek for the trip home. Well, I'm sure you remember, but the crew travels back in time to 1986 San Francisco and in this scene here, Dr. McCoy has to rescue Check Off from the barbaric medicine of the 20th century. Well, today I am here to tell you about another person who is struggling and struggling with current and changed modern medicine. Her name is Sue Sue is a seamstress in Barcelona she lives outside the city and takes the train to work she is married to her high school sweetheart and they have three children recently sue she has been having abdominal pain attacks of nausea and vomiting and that's why He went to his doctor, who ran a series of tests.

She had an MRI and she received that dreaded phone call: the diagnosis was liver

cancer

, so she met with her oncologist and a surgeon and they reviewed her case. More bad news: The tumor was too large to be surgically resected, which meant she had heard of the possibilities. Long-term survival rates decreased considerably and the tumor was located in a location that made this type of therapy difficult, where large-caliber needles are inserted through the abdomen to the tumor and the heat then kills the tumor. She was too close to a So her doctor recommended chemotherapy. Now she Sue knew that chemotherapy probably wouldn't cure her, but it would certainly make her miserable for the next few months.

Now I would like to take you to the future, where Sue has the potential to receive a therapy that uses

sound

energy instead of heat, incision or chemotherapy to cure her and so on, and so, speaking of which, ultra

sound

has been used many to many for many years to obtain images, but researchers have been testing ways to use ultrasound to create heat to

destroy

tissues that are non-invasive. Well, Charles Cain of the University of Michigan was taking a different path that he was

using

. He wanted to use the energy of the sound to create mechanical forces, not heat to

destroy

tissue.

He and his colleagues at the University of Michigan Michigan actually discovered that the mechanical forces of heat could have a great benefit compared to heat, mechanical forces, excuse the sound, they could use it to obtain great benefits, those mechanical forces in They could actually be much more accurate and have the potential for faster healing, quicker recovery, and less pain. Charles and his colleagues, along with the university's technology transfer office, licensed that technology to a newly formed company called histo Sonics, and histo Sonic set to work developing a medical device that would be able to administer histah tripsy and the most important component of that is ultrasound.

The transducer and the fundamental part of the ultrasonic transducer is the piezoelectric element. This, when electrical electricity is applied to it, vibrates and those vibrations create an ultrasonic wave that can propagate through the tissue now by organizing a series of these elements in a concave formation. The transducer then becomes capable of transmitting ultrasonic

waves

which then sharply increase in strength at the focus. By pulsing those

waves

we create the historic effect to destroy tissue at the cellular level. Now, based on this principle, vortex rx is being developed to provide doctors with the ability to treat tissue non-invasively, the transducer is placed over the target, in this case a tumor in the liver, the sound energy passes through the body to those tissues, creating an energy field that creates bubbles and then expands and collapses those bubbles. which mechanically then fractionates eight those tissues now another therapeutic ultrasound generates vibration which then creates heat to destroy those tissues which could then damage nearby non-target tissues due to thermal spread with the histah shot.

See the pulses are provided in very, very short pulses which then allow for a mechanical force and so that the rate of destruction of that tissue can be precisely controlled and monitored in real time, the tissue is then naturally absorbed into the body after treatment and natural healthy cells can grow back. This is an MRI image after histah tripsy. treatment in a preclinical model that dark circle there is the treatment zone note the precise surgical boundaries we treated where we wanted and nowhere else Now imagine if Sue was offered this therapy, she would lie down on a table and the transducer would be placed on her abdomen.

The waves that are then generated in the body now your doctor could see in real time the effect of the treatment because the bubbles of thrips histah are very easily seen

using

ultrasound or MRI visualization. So maybe you don't even need general anesthesia for specific, targeted treatment of those. tissues made without incision and without needles now this type of treatment is presented in our company histo sonics and it takes very special equipment here is a photo of the equipment there is me and my co-founders Tom and Jim and our first two employees that spiel powder Russell and Dan, that's me with the blonde hair and I love this image because it was drawn by Russell's daughter Justine and along with other artwork created by our employer by employees' children it adorns all the walls of our office in the company.

So the team here is pushing this technology towards patient care and it takes a very special team, as I said, we have been able to educate medical device regulators over this entire period of time about the development of the device itself as well as the technological foundations we have had to create new things and solve engineering challenges we also have to tell our story this team tells the story a lot we tell the story to potential clinical collaborators we tell the story to technology resources and we tell the Tell the story to many investors potential investors, we are always willing to present a proposal to a potential investor and when pressed, I even made a proposal at my own son's wedding and when we told the story we heard a lot of things that some people say it sounds like Star Trek, this could be the non-invasive healing device to replace barbaric medicine, others say it sounds like Star Trek, too often it's the future, that's not realistic and when we get that feedback it's very helpful to us because it helps us remember Sue and the millions of people suffering the pains of barbaric medicine today helps us refine the story of our message about the future of surgery the future of surgery is becoming a reality right here in the Detroit area where we hope to treat our first patient early next year and when we are here today to share positive ideas with the world from Detroit and I would like to say that my positive idea, in addition to fighting diseases with sound, is to remember Sue and remember millions of people who have that feeling of hopelessness because when we remember them and those who have the life's work in healthcare, we remember the fundamental reason why we do what we do, thank you.