Devices & Physical Therapies

Brief electric pulses applied to a tumour open pores in cell membranes so that a tiny dose of bleomycin or cisplatin floods in; used for skin metastases and, increasingly, for deep tumours.

Destroying tumours from outside the body with tightly focused sound waves, using either heat or microscopic bubbles.

Sound waves plus microbubbles briefly open the brain's protective barrier so chemotherapy or antibodies can get to the tumour.

Hyperthermia heats tumours to 40-43 °C to make radiation and chemotherapy work better.

Infusion devices are the implanted ports, smart pumps, and take-home pumps that deliver chemotherapy safely, including 46-hour infusions patients carry home.

Injecting the gene for a powerful immune cytokine into a tumour and using an electric pulse to push it into the cells, so the cytokine is made locally rather than flooding the body.

Treating early bladder cancer by putting the drug straight into the bladder through a catheter, so the whole body is spared.

Irreversible electroporation uses short high-voltage pulses that punch permanent holes in tumour cells while sparing nearby vessels and ducts.

Magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia injects iron-oxide nanoparticles into a tumour and heats them from outside with an alternating magnetic field.

Isolating the liver's circulation with catheters and balloons so that high-dose melphalan can be pumped through it and filtered out before it reaches the rest of the body; approved in 2023 for eye melanoma that has spread to the liver.

An antibody carries a light-sensitive dye to the tumour; shining near-infrared light then bursts the cells.

Gold nanoshells that accumulate in a tumour and cook it when a near-infrared laser is shone on them.

A drug that does nothing until ultrasound hits it, then kills the cells that took it up. Being tested in brain tumours because sound reaches where light cannot.

Wearable electrodes that deliver alternating electric fields disrupting cancer cell division.