Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors

Posted by rbanffy 12/22/2025

Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors(spectrum.ieee.org)

343 points | 119 comments

CGMthrowaway 12/22/2025|

What are the chances that breaking up a tumor this way seeds cancer elsewhere in the body? 2024 meta analysis of seeding I didn't see ultrasound in there: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39605885/

Here is a study on AEs specifically from this type of ultrasound: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Quote: "Cavitation detaches cancer cells/emboli from the primary site and thereby releases them into the circulation, leading to metastasis"

TaupeRanger 12/22/2025||

We simply won’t know until they do the inevitable phase2/3 RCTs. They will need to show that this method helps people survive longer or with better quality of life than the current standard of care.

cowsandmilk 12/22/2025||

HistoSonics has studies published with 50 patients. Their upcoming study with 5000 liver patients obviously will give more information, but we already have some.

And with that said, these studies are more relevant than the top of thread linking to a review from 2011 looking at papers from 2005-2006 for ultrasound cavitation causing metastases.

binarycrusader 12/23/2025|||

...they also appear to have been acquired by an investment group this past year:

https://www.fusfoundation.org/posts/transformational-milesto...

senortumnus 12/23/2025||

Bezos among them:

https://www.mddionline.com/business/jeff-bezos-others-comple...

observationist 12/22/2025|||

>>> ... the study found that removing the parachute prior to jumping led to a shocking increase in mortality among skydivers.

When there's a clear causal mechanism, additional research that doesn't propose a clear resolution to the underlying problem doesn't negate the clear causal mechanism. Releasing a bunch of loose cancer into the body is a clear causal mechanism, so unless you're filtering it or killing the loose cancer somehow, I'm not sure what those studies could tell you that overcomes the underlying problem. And until they address that problem, it's going to be limited to a quality of life type application - stopping the tumor from killing you now with the certainty of metastasis killing you later.

kaibee 12/23/2025|||

The thing about this kind of 'just so' story causal mechanism is that we still have to actually do the science to find out. Your body does filter and kill potentially cancerous cells all the time already. And cancer cells aren't like, some super thing that evolved to kill you specifically. My just-so story goes like this: 'the cancer cells die because they're suddenly outside of the specific bodypart that they were exploiting'. And we're probably both right, depending on the location of the cancer, the type of cancer, etc.

WalterBright 12/23/2025||

All life, from humans to cells to chromosomes, has only one purpose - to survive. It turns out that reproduction is an effective way to survive. Also, cooperation is an effective way to survive. The cells in our bodies cooperate for survival. Sometimes cells survive better by no longer cooperating, and reproducing as fast as possible. This winds up killing the host, but the cancer cells don't know that.

And so humans evolve to enforce better cooperation among the cells.

So, no, cancer cells did not evolve to kill you. They do evolve for short term gain, however.

It's an endless struggle.

It's not unlike the struggle between civilized people and criminals.

nradov 12/22/2025||||

So what's the problem? The vast majority of cancer treatments seek only to put the condition into remission for a while. Realistically that's often all that can be done.

thaumasiotes 12/23/2025||

Putting it into remission is basically the opposite of causing it to metastasize.

hgomersall 12/23/2025||||

The evidence seems to be that the cells are destroyed, not just split up: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9404673/

darubedarob 12/23/2025||

How do they prevent good cells from being destroyed on the way? Shaped sound waves adding up locally?

hgomersall 12/23/2025||

Yes exactly - focus at a point. You don't reach threshold pressures until you have sufficient summed waves.

gcanyon 12/23/2025||||

Some tumor types metastasize well, others not so much. But the article doesn't say anything about metastasis, or leaving any cells behind from the target. Rather, it talks about destroying the targeted cells entirely, leaving behind only proteins.

f6v 12/23/2025||||

> Releasing a bunch of loose cancer into the body is a clear causal mechanism

I'm not in cancer field, but I'm not sure it is. AFAIK the cells that metastasize need to undergo EMT. Simply releasing them from the tumor doesn't mean the cells can attach and survive in the distal site.

darubedarob 12/23/2025|||

The surface of cancer that protects it from the bodies defenses breaking up + parallel chemo or clonal antibody treatments should take care of that. But the principle critical view is correct.

amypetrik8 12/23/2025|||

What are the chances that breaking up a tumor this way seeds cancer elsewhere in the body?

Welp I put it to you like this - if you DON'T use this then you have a gorillion cancer cells among which very likely one genetically predisposed to adventure throughout the body as turbocancer.

If you use this, or radiotherapy, or whatever, presumably there is just a lump of dead tissue where the cancer was, signifying at best you cured it but at worst, knocked it down - specifically if you knocked it down from a gorillion to a million cells, genereally speaking if the body has been seeded or the tumor persists - the tumor will take longer to rebuild back up where it was. The latter is manifested as another such and such months of life, making the therapy "life extending"

jessriedel 12/23/2025|||

Cancers aren't perfectly optimized to metastasize, and metasteses (rather than, e.g., bulk pressure from the original tumor) are usually what kills you. It's perfectly possible that the procedure kills 90% or 99% of the cells in the original tumor but increases migration of the remaining cells such that the net effect reduces patient survival.

elcritch 12/23/2025||

Don't cancer metastases have more to do with cancer mutations allowing the cancer cells to form new tumors? Some cancer types tend do not develop the ability to colonize new tumors while others do regularly.

jessriedel 12/23/2025||

It's quite a bit about that, but it doesn't detract from my point. Mechanical disturbance alone can spread cancer and increase mortality.

"The risk of tumor seeding after liver biopsy is 2.7%"

https://easl.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hepatocellular-Ca...

Tissue containment systems for uterine morcellation

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/up...

spike021 12/23/2025|||

> gorillion

i'd never heard of that counter before so i googled it:

> The word "gorillion" is often used by white supremacists and Holocaust deniers in the form of "six gorillion", which mocks the figure of six million Jews that died during the Holocaust.

may want to look at using different verbiage.

CGMthrowaway 12/26/2025|||

According to a Wiktionary entry, which was revised to say that by an anonymous person in 2023, whose only other contribution was "sperm, c*m" as alternative meanings of the word "puree."[1] I could only find (citation of) a single use of the word with that meaning,[2] and the rest were antisemitism documenters repeating it as if it were in common use.

You may want to look at using a different dictionary.

[1]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/99.114....

[2]https://www.teenvogue.com/story/neo-nazi-groups-target-jewis...

mrguyorama 12/23/2025|||

Most non-shitty people probably picked it up from Meme stock sub cultures and wallstreetbets

Of course, one should ask themselves why so much of that culture is fed from and feeds into outright hateful people like nazis and Eugenicists and vague wife haters, and conspiracy theorists who "aren't nazis" but sure seem to believe everything is the fault of the jews.

"Gorillion" as I saw it was about the "Ape" context of wallstreetbets discourse. The Ape framing is actually non-hateful, referencing the new Planet of the Apes movies where someone makes a dumb analogy to a bundle of sticks: "Ape together strong"

They are similarly fans of calling people and things retarded, but that was getting reddit itself to nag them. So they switched to "regarded", because they aren't very clever.

Other gems of this community include frequent references to making "wife changing money" and an insistence that after GME totally turns out to not have been a scam and they bring down the entire american economy through literal shenanigans, that they will all collectively be crowned king, and totally won't oppress anyone, but also they relish the expectation that they will be able to smugly say "I told you so" to all the people suffering in their new regime.

They also adore doing the kind of "theory crafting" that is usually done by the most crazy person you know trying to "prove" bill gates did 9/11 because of that wingdings thing from 20 years ago.

But culture leaks, so this person might have just picked it up somewhere.

adamredwoods 12/22/2025|||

Chemo post-histrophy would remove any lingering cancer cells effectively. Cancer cells need lots of fuel or they stop replicating, and this is what traditional chemo is great at stopping.

makestuff 12/23/2025|||

Is the idea that you would need less chemo after the tumor is broken up to remove any remaining cancer cells versus just starting out with chemo to remove the tumor?

adamredwoods 12/23/2025||

Chemotherapy isn't always successful, and depends on the tumor's characteristics, but the idea is yes, less chemo. Histrophy is similar to resection, physically removing a tumor. I've seen chemo options for both scenarios with resectable cancers. For example, hormonal therapy is usually prescribed after resectable breast cancer, regardless of outcome. Or, chemo first to shrink the tumor, and have better surgical margins.

gamblor956 12/23/2025|||

The keto diet is also very good for this because many (but not all) cancer cells can't metabolize ketones. However recent research from Columbia Medical School suggests that it can promote metastasis.

bythreads 12/23/2025||

Edited for politeness:

Cancer metabolism isn’t a 2-bit meme. Tumors adapt. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t metastasize.

gamblor956 12/23/2025||

It's a good thing you edited for politeness because you seemed to be basing your understanding of what I said based on stuff you read on Reddit.

A number of studies show that, in humans, the keto diet (the medical keto diet[1] and not the meat heavy Internet version) causes metabolic stress in breast cancer cells and in several other types of cancer, due to their significantly increased metabolic needs. It's like the difference between a normal human and Michael Phelps during Olympic competition. The cancer cells can process ketones, but not efficiently enough to fuel their activity so they starve.

In humans this eventually results in the death or deactivation of the cancerous cells (deactivation being the primary way that tumors "adapt" to a starvation diet). There have been few, if any, reported cases of metastasis in the types of cancers studied in humans. This outcome is statistically significant enough that multiple cancer treatment centers recommend the medical keto diet to human patients as part of a treatment regime.

As mentioned, the recent study from 2024 shows that this type of metabolic stress can, in mice cause the cancerous cells to metastasize in a last-ditch attempt to survive. However, very little of the cancer research conducted on mice has applications to human cancers. For example, chemotherapy has also been shown to cause metastasis in mice, and a number of earlier studies attempting to replicate the keto research in humans shows that the keto diet in mice increases tumor growth, which is the opposite effect it has in humans.

[1] The medical keto diet is basically just fat and vitamins. No carbs, and minimal to no protein because protein can get converted into glucose by gluconeogenesis. It is not a diet anyone would want to be on longer than strictly necessary. One of my friends had stage 4 metastatic lung cancer, which she discovered during a company-sponsored mud run. Surgery was not an option and chemotherapy was not working. With less than 4 months to live, she went on the medical keto diet and the two-punch combo of keto and chemo put the cancer into remission for almost three years. (Note: She only maintained the diet for a few months after ending chemo treatment. Unfortunately not all of the cancer cells had died, some had merely deactivated. Four years after remission the cancer cells reactivated with a vengeance and she died the day after she started showing symptoms.)

jjtheblunt 12/22/2025|||

> What are the chances that breaking up a tumor this way seeds cancer elsewhere in the body?

that's discussed in the article

j16sdiz 12/23/2025||

I read it three time and can't see anything related.

jjtheblunt 12/23/2025||

they mention at the end that the destruction of tissue exposes proteins normal and abnormal to the immune system, with the abnormal ones no longer hidden by tumor structures. if you then search (kagi, google, etc) for this there are results where this worked fantastically.

candiddevmike 12/22/2025|||

> The mechanical destruction of tumors likely leaves behind recognizable traces of cancer proteins that help the immune system learn to identify and destroy similar cells elsewhere in the body, explains Wood

Seems a little too speculatively worded, IMO.

softjobs 12/23/2025|||

It's called the abscopal effect; see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8537037/

f6v 12/23/2025||

Yes, we were doing a clinical trial where the primary tumor was irradiated which causes antigen release. The patients were given immune checkpoint inhibitors at the same time to activate immune cells. It's promising but tricky.

flir 12/22/2025||||

If it was true, couldn't you get the same effect by taking a biopsy, fragmenting the cells, and injecting them back in? Like a vaccination, in fact. Somebody must have studied that approach already.

f6v 12/23/2025|||

First issue is that tumors don't necessarily have to be highly immunogenic, e.g. there're tumors that don't present many neoantigens on the surface. This means immune cells can't easily recognize them. Second issue is that tumor microenvironment evolves to be immunosuppressive. There're many different signals that regulate immune cells activation and simply having antigen-specific cells isn't enough. But as someone said in a sister thread, what you're describing is a basis for multiple clinical trials that combine antigen release with immune activation.

rincebrain 12/23/2025||||

There were reports that if you inject the goo from melting the tumor into another mouse, that mouse became much more resistant to that class of tumor[1], so...

[1] - https://news.engin.umich.edu/2023/10/these-bubbles-kill-canc...

londons_explore 12/23/2025||||

I assume the immune system probably already reacts to this in a specific way. For example, a major bruise has a lot of broken up cells, but doesn't warrant a big immune response.

klipt 12/23/2025||||

Cancer immunotherapy is a whole field of research and treatment, yes.

amelius 12/23/2025||||

Exactly my thought.

cowsandmilk 12/22/2025|||

Major damage tends to cause a much larger immune response than a vaccination. That said, they do have therapeutic cancer vaccines that present proteins from cancer (sometimes patient-specific) with adjuvants to help stimulate the immune response.

underlipton 12/23/2025|||

Interested layman here: IIUC, immunotherapy is currently the holy grail for difficult-to-treat cancers like pancreatic. There are designer mRNA vaccines available that have ridiculous efficacy, but they must be tailored to each individual and so are extremely expensive (and are currently undergoing trials). mRNA COVID vaccines have been shown in some studies to increase the lifespan of pancreatic cancer patients. So, it's not hard for me to imagine that a treatment that gives the immune system a crack at learning to identify and destroy pancreatic cancer cells will boost survivability.

Part of the freak-out about the Trump admin's attacking of scientific research (including, especially, of mRNA research) earlier in the year is that it threatened these trials.

yread 12/23/2025|||

Metastasis is not just random tumor cell going for a hike, they are seeded with extracellular vesicles carrying particular mix of microRNAs, growth factors, vimentin and other stuff.

pedalpete 12/22/2025|||

It seems they are initially focused on pancreatic cancer, which has a very low survival rate ~14% [1].

In theory, this may mean that metastisizing this tumour could destroy it in the pancreas, but allow the cells to spread to more treatable locations?

1 - https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-types/pancreatic-c...

cowsandmilk 12/22/2025||

?? HistoSonics first target was the liver, second was kidney. Pancreas is the third organ they’ve targeted.

agumonkey 12/22/2025||

It would not be the first therapy that may promote spread while curing the primary site. Hopefully there are measures to assess the cost / benefits.

CGMthrowaway 12/22/2025||

For sure. Goes without saying in any cancer treatment that cost/benefit is a prime consideration. Still, that will not stop me from asking the question. You can't do that analysis without the answers after all.

agumonkey 12/22/2025||

Stopping you wasn't my intent. I'm just a visitor sharing some stuff.

If any medical professional could give answers that would be neat.

amashal 12/23/2025||

We are more than a decade away from knowing if Histosonics technology will actually be a meaningful treatment modality. It definitely is 'cool' in that there is no incision. However, whenever you deliver ultrasound energy from outside of the body, accuracy goes down; you are also limited by anatomy in the path of the ultrasound (e.g. going through the rib cage with ultrasound is not trivial). Folks I have spoken to who have bought these units say they are only allowed to use them if the tumor is superficial (i.e. near the skin). On top of that patient motion due to breathing definitely causes inaccuracies and complications. One doctor said it's an expensive paperweight (but it does bring patients in who ask for it).

Also, the clinical efficacy is not fully understood. Researchers are most excited by an enhanced abscopal effect (i.e. natural immune response), but that's not a proven phenomenon. Finally, it is really expensive (~$1.5M) so it will be difficult to scale outside of research hospitals and cancer centers. Of course, I don't want to be too negative. It's a win for patients when they have more options.

Full disclosure: I am co-founder of Current Surgical, where we are developing a minimally invasive system based on miniaturized focused ultrasound to achieve precise thermal ablation (not cavitation). Our device can both see and destroy tissue from the same sensors, we can achieve millimeter accuracy. And because the technology can be integrated into any number of surgical tools (needle, catheter, etc) we can potentially reach any anatomy.

KellyCriterion 12/23/2025|

May I ask: > Folks I have spoken to who have bought these units say they are only allowed to use them if the tumor is superficial <

Is this because of: - the efficiency is going down massivly (maybe into useless)

- using it "below superficial" might cause other/new problems?

amashal 12/25/2025||

There are a couple of reasons.

1. There is a wavelength and penetration depth trade off. For better accuracy you need smaller wavelengths (i.e. higher frequencies) but at higher frequencies ultrasound pressure gets absorbed at a higher rate, making it challenging to get the required pressure levels deeper into tissue.

2. Ultrasound focus can deflect as it travels in tissue (tissue is a non-linear material and multiple tissue types impacts wave propagation). The deeper you try to focus, the more likely that there is a deflection; thus your focus point won’t be exactly where you were planning.

chaboud 12/22/2025||

I had the opportunity to meet with folks from Histosonics at a Canopy Cancer Collective (pancreas cancer focused group - https://canopycancer.org/) annual meeting a couple of years ago. They had shown very promising results (and approval) with liver cancer, and the applicability to any soft-tissue openly-addressable masses (e.g., not brains in skulls, not lungs full of air) seemed very likely, based on the physics. (Note: I'm a consumer electronics and ML engineer, not a medical devices engineer).

I'm excited to see this option become more broadly available. The ability to precisely target and illicit an inflammatory response is impressive, and Whipples are no joke.

YossarianFrPrez 12/22/2025||

Per the article, this seems even better than the headline would suggest:

> Histotripsy generally seems to stimulate an immune response, helping the body attack cancer cells that weren’t targeted directly by ultrasound. The mechanical destruction of tumors likely leaves behind recognizable traces of cancer proteins that help the immune system learn to identify and destroy similar cells elsewhere in the body, explains Wood. Researchers are now exploring ways to pair histotripsy with immunotherapy to amplify that effect.

jtbaker 12/22/2025||

As someone who was recently diagnosed and treated for Uveal Melanoma (get your annual eye exam and retinal scans!), and occasionally struggling with some intrusive thoughts about the potential for liver mets, reading about this treatment brought me so much joy. Bless Zhen Xu!

moralestapia 12/22/2025|

Hey, I'm curious, did you have symptoms or did you just find it by chance?

jtbaker 12/22/2025|||

no symptoms. first identified the lesion a few years back and it hadn't changed over a few subsequent appointments. exam this year, it had grown a small amount 5mmx5mm to 6mmx8mm - still considered small, but the change was enough for the Drs to recommend treatment. I have been treated by Dr. Dan Gombos[1] at MD Anderson and received excellent care.

[1] https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/dan_gombos.html

moralestapia 12/22/2025||

Interesting, thanks.

Best wishes!

jtbaker 12/23/2025||

Thank you!

f6v 12/23/2025|||

I have a relative with the same disease. They went to a an eye doctor because of visual artifacts. Turns out the tumor was so big it caused retinal detachment. Basically, most people get diagnosed at a very late stage because it's mostly asymptomatic.

_sxou 12/23/2025||

Could this be applicable and available to the public within a reasonable time horizon? My mother is dealing with a brain tumor located in the pons, and no surgeons will operate because of its location, as the risk is too high. Radiation treatments have also been exhausted and have already caused some necrosis. There was another form of light-based therapy, but it is experimental and carries an incredibly high risk as well. The prognosis has never been good, but we’ve been holding out hope. At this point, treatment consists of nonstop chemotherapy.

bobim 12/23/2025|

Getting the US through the skull bone is next to impossible due to the acoustic impedance mismatch with surrounding tissues. As a stranger I'm deeply sorry for your situation, and thought your question should be answered somehow...

If you want to dig a little bit, the team of Mathias Fink in Paris explored "time reversal" techniques to get through the skull: one have to emmit from the tumor location, listen with a huge array, reverse the signature and blast. I don't know if this ended with a medical device.

Take care.

_sxou 12/25/2025||

Thanks for the kind words and the response, I'll take a look. Even though it feels fruitless as we've already got doctors working on it and likely much more aware of what's available or coming. I'm just a software engineer who's trying to make sense of it all.

melling 12/22/2025||

The machine has been available for a couple years to treat liver tumors. It’s available in several US cities but not widely available. It uses cavitation to destroy the tumor.

https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/histotripsy-for-liver-...

cogman10 12/22/2025||

Due to some family stuff, this is something I've been investigating. My oncologist has said "this will probably be standard care in a few years". The results and studies around this have been excellent.

What this does better than pretty much anything else is it isolates the destruction of cells to just the target. The liver is a VERY "bleedy" organ. It has a ton of blood that flows through it which makes surgery extra hard. In fact, the not this surgery that's next best for our circumstances laparoscopic through the arteries to drop a radioactive pellet in the center of the cancer.

The non-invasive nature of this is going to be very good for the future of cancer treatment. Minimizing scaring and damage to tissue is the number 1 factor to better results.

The only reason my local oncologist does not have this machine is they are still pretty pricey.

When I first learned about this, I thought it was pseudo-science BS. It's crazy what can be done with just sound.

doctorpangloss 12/23/2025||

Pretty pricey, yes. HistoSonics is a microcosm of the truth of healthcare spending: it is an amazing technology made by possible by deep and sophisticated capital markets. But, better health technology seems to explain more than 50% of the growth of healthcare spending since medicare (1965), meaning all of the faster-than-GDP growth people gripe about. When people talk about slowing health spending to something manageable, they are talking about not just govt not paying for things like histotrispy - not paying is a shell game, nobody chooses to not pay to save their life, and hence faster than GDP healthcare spending growth is observed everywhere in the West, not just the US. They are talking about somehow making the technology not happen altogether.

chiph 12/22/2025|||

I finished treatment for prostate cancer this summer. Most of my time in the x-ray machine was spent getting the alignment right. They'd take a CT scan, do some image analysis and other computations, then adjust the table some small amount before turning the beam on.

I'm curious how they do the alignment with the histotripsy machine. I would think that they could obviously do an ultrasound scan to get the gross alignment correct. But perhaps there is a CT scan afterwards that lets them make the fine alignment. It probably also helps that the liver is a much larger gland so aiming is less critical?

cogman10 12/22/2025||

I'm not sure how they do it exactly. I know just the nature of the machine is that it has a massive array of ultrasound emitters and sensors.

elcritch 12/23/2025||

Ideally it'd just be software driven. Take an ultrasound scan, adjust, blast. In theory this could be done in milliseconds to counter patient movements. Pretty nifty really!

valcron1000 12/23/2025|||

I'm unfortunately on the same situation. We made a consultation with people from Baptist Health Miami and it seems like there are several non trivial requirements for such treatment (histotripsy), like the number and location of mets. Hope that this improves in the mear future.

dr_dshiv 12/23/2025|||

> When I first learned about this, I thought it was pseudo-science BS. It's crazy what can be done with just sound.

I think we were all thinking that. Acoustic Cavitation has also been proposed as a mechanism for enabling cold fusion. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1067589

pointbob 12/23/2025||

Cool

0xWTF 12/22/2025||

Histotripsy means "cell pulverizing". We know disruption (pulverization or otherwise) of a tumor bed tends to incite a local inflammatory reaction, and a brisk inflammatory reaction seems to correlate with survival. So the idea here seems to be an extension of high energy ultrasound methods developed for lithotripsy (breaking up kidney stones) to disrupt tumor beds. Not something I'd want for a pre-cancerous lesion, but if it's stage 4 liver mets ... sure. Have at it.

lostsock 12/22/2025|

The awesome "What's your problem" postcast had an episode with the CEO of this company recently which I really enjoyed: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/using-sou...

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