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Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 15|pp 7496—7512

Study on the effect of a triple cancer treatment of propolis, thermal cycling-hyperthermia, and low-intensity ultrasound on PANC-1 cells

Yu-Yi Kuo1,2, Wei-Ting Chen1,2, Guan-Bo Lin1,2, Chueh-Hsuan Lu1,2, Chih-Yu Chao1,2,3
  • 1Department of Physics, Lab for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
  • 2Molecular Imaging Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
  • 3Graduate Institute of Applied Physics, Biophysics Division, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Received: February 10, 2023Accepted: July 6, 2023Published: July 27, 2023
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204916

Copyright: © 2023 Kuo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

To reduce side effects and enhance treatment efficacy, study on combination therapy for pancreatic cancer, a deadly cancer, has gained much attraction in recent years. In this study, we propose a novel triple treatment combining propolis and two physical stimuli-thermal cycling-hyperthermia (TC-HT) and low-intensity ultrasound (US). The study found that, after the triple treatment, the cell viability of a human cancer cell line PANC-1 decreased to a level 80% less than the control, without affecting the normal pancreatic cells. Another result was excessive accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) after the triple treatment, leading to the amplification of apoptotic pathway through the MAPK family and mitochondrial dysfunction. This study, to the best of our knowledge, is the first attempt to combine TC-HT, US, and a natural compound in cancer treatment. The combination of TC-HT and US also promotes the anticancer effect of the heat-sensitive chemotherapy drug cisplatin on PANC-1 cells. It is expected that optimized parameters for different agents and different types of cancer will expand the methodology on oncological therapy in a safe manner.