Paper detail

Delivery of Liquid Metal to the Target Vessels as Vascular Embolic Agent to Starve Diseased Tissues or Tumors to Death

Tumor growth relies heavily on the continuous blood and nutrients supply. Theoretically, it is an ideal therapeutic way of killing tumor by only vascular embolization. However, most of the existing vascular embolic agents are still rather insufficient to fulfill the real clinical need due to the reasons like: incomplete filling of target vasculature, being easily washed away by blood or body solution, or just producing toxicity to tissues. Here from an alternative way, the body temperature liquid metal, a kind of soft and highly compliant material, was proposed for the first time as blood vessel embolization agent for tumor physical therapy. With its unique capability of easy phase transition between liquid and solid state and sub-cooling behavior, such material can be fluently injected into the tiny vessels including ending capillaries and fully block them. The in vitro cytotoxicity experiments were performed which showed that treating localized diseased tissues through liquid metal embolic agent is acceptable. Endowed with a high density, the liquid metal-filled vessels are highly visible under the CT scan, which offers the potential of diagnosis-treatment integration. To further demonstrate the new conceptual liquid metal vascular embolization therapy, several experiments on in vivo vasculatures of rabbit ears and mouse tails were performed to provide evidences of destroying the targeted tissues. To interpret the liquid metal starvation therapy effects, a theoretical model was established to simulate the tumor growth with zero, partial or complete filling of the metal agent inside the vessels. All the results support that, given appropriate administration, the liquid metal embolization is able to destruct the target regions and might starve the tumors to death through a relatively easy way. This study lays the foundation of a promising tumor starvation therapy in the coming time.