Neurophilosophy

The glioblastoma patient in the image on the right is wearing a device called the NovoTFF-100A developed by NovoCure, a biotechnology company based in Haifa, Israel. This “electric hat” is a non-invasive device containing four sets of insulated electrodes which can be glued to the patient’s scalp in the corect position to deliver low intensity electric fields with a frequency of 200 kiloHertz to the tumour.

The electric fields generated by the device have been shown to prevent cancerous cells from dividing. During cell division, a structure called the mitotic spindle is involved in segregating the newly-duplicated chromosomes, so that each daughter cell receives a full complement of genetic material. The cytoskeletal proteins of which the spindle consists are electrically charged, with one end carrying a negative charge and the other carrying a positive charge. The electric fields prevent spindle formation, and therefore stop cancerous cells from dividing.

In a recent clinical trial conducted by NovoCure, 10 glioblastoma patients were asked to wear the electric hat continuously for 18 months. In 8 of these patients, growth of the tumour stopped, and life expectancy was increased in comparison to other patients treated only with chemotherapy. In four of the patients, the tumours stopped growing, and in another four they shrank. One patient’s tumour seems to have disappeared altogether, as it could not be detected by magnetic resonance imaging.

The results of this clinical trial sound promising, even though the trial involved only a small number of cancer patients, and there were no controls. A larger clinical trial involving more than 200 glioblastoma patients is under way in Europe and the United States. However, the NovoTFF-100A is an experimental device, and other studies have shown that electrical stimulation of the brain inthis way can produce seizures in rats. Nevertheless, such a device would not have the side effects associated with chemotherapy, and its developers hope to modify the device so that it can also be used to treat other types of the disease, such as breast and lung cancer.

This 20-minute film clip contains more information about the device and about glioblastomas, and this short clip I uploaded to YouTube shows a malignant melaonoma cell exploding after being exposed to a 100 kHz electric field.

Source: ScienceNOW.