Ultrasound cancer treatment: Sound waves fight tumors

For many years, Doctors and technicians who performed medical ultrasound procedures looked at the bubbles with wary concern. The phenomenon of cavitation—the formation and collapse of tiny gas bubbles due to changes in pressure—was considered an unwanted and largely uncontrollable side effect. But in 2001, researchers at the University of Michigan began exploring ways to harness this phenomenon to destroy cancerous tumors and other problematic tissue.

The problem was that creating and controlling the cavity generated heat, which damaged healthy tissue outside the targeted area. Chen Shuwho was working on his Ph.D. She was in biomedical engineering at the time, and was bombarding pig heart tissue in a tank of water with ultrasound when she had a breakthrough.

The key was to use very powerful ultrasound waves to produce negative pressure in excess of 20 MPa, delivered in short bursts measured in microseconds, but separated by relatively long gaps, ranging from a millisecond to a full second. These agents created bubbles that quickly formed and collapsed, tearing apart nearby cells and turning the tissue into a kind of slurry, while avoiding heat buildup. The result was a form of incisionless surgery, a way to eliminate tumors without scalpels, radiation or heat.

“The experiments worked, but I also destroyed the ultrasound equipment I used,” which was the most powerful equipment available at the time, says Shaw, now a professor at the University of Michigan. In 2009, I co-founded a company, Histosonixto market more powerful ultrasound devices, test treatments for a variety of diseases, and make the procedure, called histotripsy, more widely available.

So far, the killer app is fighting cancer. In 2023, HistoSonics’ Edison system received FDA approval. Treatment of liver tumors. In 2026, doctors will conclude a Pivotal Kidney Cancer Study and apply for regulatory approval. They will also launch a large-scale pivotal trial for pancreatic cancer, which is considered one of the deadliest forms of the disease with a survival rate of just five years. 13 percent. An effective treatment for pancreatic cancer would represent a major advance against one of the deadliest malignancies.

Benefits of tissue fragmentation for cancer treatment

HistoSonics is not the only developer of tissue dissection devices or technologies, but it is the first to market with a device designed for this purpose. “What HistoSonics has developed is a symphony of technologies, combining physics, biology and biomedical engineering,” he says. Bradford Woodan interventional radiologist at the National Institutes of Health, who is not affiliated with the company. Her engineering efforts span multiple disciplines to produce computer-guided robotic systems that convert physical forces into therapeutic effects.

Over the past decade, research has confirmed or found other benefits of tissue fragmentation. Through precise calibration, fibrous tissue – such as blood vessels – can be protected from damage even in the targeted area. While other non-surgical techniques may leave scar tissue, the liquefied debris resulting from tissue breakdown is removed by the body’s natural processes.

In HistoSonics’ early trials for pancreatic cancer, doctors used focused ultrasound pulses to ablate or destroy tumors deep within the pancreas. “It is a great achievement for the entire field to show that pancreatic tumors can be resected, and that they are well tolerated,” he says. Tatiana Khokhlovaa medical ultrasound researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, who has worked on alternative tissue fragmentation techniques.

The key to reaping the benefits of tissue fragmentation “will be to combine resection of the primary tumor in the pancreas with some other treatment,” Khokhlova says. Combination therapy can fight recurrent cancer and small tumors that ultrasound might fail to detect, while also providing a surprising benefit.

Tissue fragmentation generally appears to be as well Stimulate the immune responsewhich helps the body attack cancer cells that are not directly targeted by ultrasound. Mechanical destruction of tumors likely leaves behind recognizable traces of cancer proteins that help the immune system learn to recognize and destroy similar cells elsewhere in the body, Wood explains. Researchers are now exploring ways to pair tissue fragmentation with immunotherapy to amplify this effect.

The CEO of HistoSonics says the company’s ability to explore treatment possibilities for different conditions will only improve over time Mike Blue. The company has new resources to accelerate R&D: a new ownership group that includes billionaire Jeff Bezos, acquired HistoSonics in August 2025 at a valuation of US$2.25 billion.

Engineers are already testing a new guidance system that uses a form of X-ray instead of ultrasound imaging, which could expand use cases. The R&D team is also developing a feedback system that analyzes therapeutic ultrasound echoes to detect tissue destruction and incorporates that information into the live display, Blue says.

If these advances are successful, tissue fragmentation could move beyond the liver, kidneys and pancreas in the fight against cancer. What started as a curiosity about bubbles may soon become a new pillar of non-surgical medicine, a future in which surgeons use not scalpels, but sound waves.