Experimental bandage could fight melanoma
An experimental heat-activated bandage developed by Chinese researchers could fight melanoma by releasing copper ions that destroy underlying cancer cells and prevent their spread, says a new study published by the American Chemical Society.
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The study authors say that tests in mice demonstrated that the bandage reduced melanoma lesions without damaging surrounding tissue.
“It’s promising, but humans are not mice,” said Dr. Elena Netchiporouk, who is a dermatologist and researcher at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center. Mouse melanoma and human melanoma are still very different, they are not the same genetic mutations. »
Melanomas usually develop in the outer and middle layers of the skin. It is therefore difficult to destroy cancer cells while preserving surrounding healthy tissue.
The bandage is flexible, extensible, breathable in contact with the skin and chemically inert. The researchers hypothesized that by heating it slightly, it would release copper ions which would interact with the DNA of cancer cells and destroy them through oxidative stress.
This mechanism, they believed, should also trigger an immune response that would prevent tumor cells from migrating to other parts of the body (in other words, from metastasizing).
In a first laboratory experiment, the researchers heated the bandage to 42 degrees Celsius. Once activated, the bandage released copper ions into the melanoma cells, killing most of them.
“At 42 degrees, it creates heat stress for the tumor cells, but not for the surrounding cells,” explained Dr. Netchiporouk. And this heat released the copper from the bandage to go directly into the tumor. »
The death of tumor cells led to the production of free radicals, which triggered an immune response, she continued, “to clean up all the damage and kill the tumor even more.”
“So the bandage caused the cancer cells to die in three ways, directly, then indirectly with the immune system,” emphasized Dr. Netchiporouk.
Then, in a ten-day preclinical experiment, the treatment reduced melanoma lesions by approximately 97%. As expected, tissue samples showed that the cancer cells had not spread beyond the boundaries of the tumor and that copper ions had not accumulated in the organs or blood.
However, it is not tomorrow that such a bandage will be available in dermatologists’ offices, underlined Dr. Netchiporouk, who recalls that less than 10% of preclinical studies one day lead to clinical trials.
“The concept is very promising, very innovative, very interesting […] but it takes a long time before it arrives in our offices. But it’s very exciting, she concluded.
The findings of this study were published by the renowned scientific journal ACS Nano.
