Background: To investigate the effects of low intensity ultrasound on human lung cancer cells.
Methods: The human small cell lung cancer cells line SM, adenocarcinoma cell line A2 and human lung fibroblast cells FB were treated with low intensity ultrasound, and the killing effects of ultrasound on the cells were detected by the trypan blue exclusion and clonogenic survival assay.
Results: The killing effects of low intensity ultrasound ( 0. 8W/ cm²) on various type of human lung cancer and human pulmonary fibroblast were observed after 3-minute treatment. All of the cells were killed by sonicate for 10-minute treatment. The higher the cell concentration, the lower the killing efficiency. The temperature in the tube containing cell suspension did not obviously increase after 10-minute sonicate. Compared with the application of doxorubicin alone, the doxorubicin cytoxicity was increased by 100-fold in SM cell cologenic survival assay when doxorubicin was combined with an intensity of ultrasound at 0. 8W/ cm².
Conclusions: The low intensity continuous wave ultrasound can obviously kill lung cancer cells and dramatically increase the cytotoxicity of doxorubicin for lung cancer cells.