Top
Best
New

Posted by rbanffy 13 hours ago

Ultrasound Cancer Treatment: Sound Waves Fight Tumors(spectrum.ieee.org)
234 points | 64 commentspage 2
jmward01 12 hours ago|
The advancements in imaging, cheap intelligence and non-invasive (mostly) tools like this are amazing. I can easily see a future where we can scan, and analyze, every cell in a body and then selectively manipulate them to achieve the desired effect. I doubt we are actually that far away actually.
lostsock 10 hours ago||
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...
PaulHoule 10 hours ago||
In general there is a lot of work on ultrasound stimulation now, some of it is scary in other ways:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65080-9

which could imaginably lead to wireheading or something like Niven's "tasp".

gsf_emergency_6 6 hours ago|
There's also

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008332

Are these guys losers,clueless, or born psychopaths?

I hope for another category :)

mcbain 12 hours ago||
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45514378
maxdo 6 hours ago||
from purely physics , how is cancer cell different from regular cell to react with ultra/infra? is it so different?
rincebrain 2 hours ago|
It's not.

The key thing is, one of the things most tumors need to do to get past a certain point is avoid getting caught being tumors.

If you can very selectively cause precise tissue death, from any method, then your body will suddenly start looking askance at any tissue that looks like the secretly-full-of-tumor-markers corpse it just found.

And ultrasonic cavitation means you can, in theory, cause very precise tissue death with even less surrounding effect than radiation.

buu700 6 hours ago||
Thanks for posting this. Sounds super promising, and the explanation of histotripsy's mechanism of action is compelling.

Given the 2023 approval (for liver tumors) and oversubscribed $250m funding round announced in October, it seems like there's a ton of momentum behind this. I also see that the treatment is available at my local hospital system (Inova), which is an encouraging sign of its general availability.

Anyone who's commenting to ask whether it's an option for you or a loved one, check your state's right-to-try laws. Virginia and various other states do apparently have right-to-try laws that cover medical devices: https://triagecancer.org/state-laws/righttotry.

Fuck cancer.

jbverschoor 10 hours ago||
Does this work with lung cancer?
bobim 1 hour ago|
Probably not as lungs are behind the rib cage and filled with air, making two sources of spurious reflections that could be dangerous with high intensity ultrasounds.
darkerside 13 hours ago||
Dumb question, but isn't there a risk of spreading cancer causing proteins throughout the body with this approach?
ramraj07 12 hours ago||
Cancer isn't caused by proteins in the way you might think. Its definitely not infectious at the protein level. You could ask if this disruption spreads out cancer cells themselves and that would be fair to ask. But then the cancer cells were already in your body and were likely trying to migrate to other sites anyway.
amelius 12 hours ago||
Ok, but this might stimulate migration further.
sowbug 12 hours ago||
The success of surgery to remove solid tumors usually hinges on whether there are "clean margins," meaning they were able to remove all the bad tissue and a little good surrounding tissue just to be sure. It's likely that the same principle applies using this new procedure: if you blast the whole thing and trust the body to clean up the mess, hopefully there won't be anything left to worry about.
ramoz 10 hours ago|||
> 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.
jjtheblunt 11 hours ago||
the article talks about this, the (too vaguely explained) tldr is that pulverization allows neoantigens to be exposed to the immune system rather than hidden within a tumor. i saw elsewhere (weeks ago) an article that this worked excellently, but this article seems to not reference it.

this is one such article:

https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2025/11/tricking-tumors-i...

pointbob 5 hours ago|
Heavy metal has entered the chat.