Plasma Treatment Limits Human Melanoma Spheroid Growth and Metastasis Independent of the Ambient Gas Composition

Melanoma skin cancer is still a deadly disease despite recent advances in therapy. Previous studies have suggested medical plasma technology as a promising modality for melanoma treatment. However, the efficacy of plasmas operated under different ambient air conditions and the comparison of direct a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inCancers Vol. 12; no. 9; p. 2570
Main Authors Hasse, Sybille, Meder, Tita, Freund, Eric, von Woedtke, Thomas, Bekeschus, Sander
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 09.09.2020
MDPI
Subjects
Apoptosis
Cancer therapies
Care and treatment
Cell adhesion & migration
Cytotoxicity
E-cadherin
Effluents
Extracellular matrix
Flow cytometry
Medical prognosis
Melanoma
Metastases
Metastasis
Mortality
Patient outcomes
Plasma
S100A4 protein
Skin cancer
Spheroids
Tumors
β-Catenin
Germany
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Melanoma skin cancer is still a deadly disease despite recent advances in therapy. Previous studies have suggested medical plasma technology as a promising modality for melanoma treatment. However, the efficacy of plasmas operated under different ambient air conditions and the comparison of direct and indirect plasma treatments are mostly unexplored for this tumor entity. Moreover, exactly how plasma treatment affects melanoma metastasis has still not been explained. Using 3D tumor spheroid models and high-content imaging technology, we addressed these questions by utilizing one metastatic and one non-metastatic human melanoma cell line targeted with an argon plasma jet. Plasma treatment was toxic in both cell lines. Modulating the oxygen and nitrogen ambient air composition (100/0, 75/25, 50/50, 25/75, and 0/100) gave similar toxicity and reduced the spheroid growth for all conditions. This was the case for both direct and indirect treatments, with the former showing a treatment time-dependent response while the latter resulted in cytotoxicity with the longest treatment time investigated. Live-cell imaging of in-gel cultured spheroids indicated that plasma treatment did not enhance metastasis, and flow cytometry showed a significant modulation of S100A4 but not in any of the five other metastasis-related markers (β-catenin, E-cadherin, LEF1, SLUG, and ZEB1) investigated.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
Contributed equally as first authors.
ISSN:2072-6694
2072-6694
DOI:10.3390/cancers12092570