纳米冷冻治疗学——纳米医学的新前沿

近年来,借助低温方法对恶性肿瘤实施靶向治疗已成为肿瘤临床和生物医学工程研究领域中的重要主题。为了突破制约传统冷冻手术治疗效率的技术瓶颈,本实验室首次提出将纳米技术与低温工程学相结合,以发展先进肿瘤微创治疗方法的技术理念,并在相应的机理分析、试验研究和医疗仪器的研制等方面取得进展。种种态势表明,纳米冷冻治疗学正成为纳米医学领域内极具探索价值的新前沿。由于这一方法在调控冰球生长方向和强度、确保肿瘤适形治疗以及提高医学成像分辨率等方面均优于传统手段,因而在预期的临床应用上可望取得较佳结果。该方法的提出,为发展高效物理靶向治疗开辟了一条新的途径。本文在简要剖析低温医学技术发展态势的基础上,评述了纳米冷冻治疗这一未来纳米医学领域可能具有重要意义的概念,阐述了其基本特点、功能和应用方式等问题,并以本实验室前期取得的系列进展为例,剖析了在现阶段发展纳米冷冻治疗技术的途径;同时也对纳米冷冻治疗学的前景进行了展望,归纳出了一些有待解决的基础科学和应用技术问题。

Nano Cryosurgical Therapy: New Frontier in Nano Medicine

In recent years, cryogenic approaches for a targeted treatment on malignant tumor become more and more important in both clinics and biomedical engineering area. To breakthrough the bottleneck of the traditional cryosurgery, this study combines the nano technology and the cryogenic technology and proposes for the first time to develop a highly advanced therapy for a minimally invasive treatment of tumor. Progresses have been made on its mechanism, experimental demonstrations as well as development of medical equipment. Various evidences indicate that, the nano cryosurgical therapy is a new frontier worth of particular attention in the nano medicine field. Since this new technical strategy has unique merits over the traditional cryosurgery in regulating the growth direction and strength of ice ball, enabling a conformable tumor treatment, and enhancing image resolution etc., it is expected that one may achieve much better treatment efficiency than an ordinary cryosurgery. The nano cryosurgery opens new possibilities for developing highly targeted physical therapies on tumor. In this paper, following a brief review on the advance of cryosurgery, the concept of nano cryosurgery and its generalized significance in future nano medicine are illustrated. The basic feature, capability, and implementation of the nano cryosurgery are discussed. With the progresses in our laboratory as examples, strategies to develop future nano cryosurgery are proposed. Future prospect of this new therapy is presented. Some fundamental and practical issues are identified.