[File photo]

A brand new radiation therapy is now being carried out in clinical trials held in Shanghai. The therapy may serve as a nationally available treatment for various cancers in the future, experts said.

The therapy, which was jointly researched by scientists from Shanghai Jiaotong University and several first-class hospitals in Shanghai, aims to fully destroy cancer cells and capillaries by freezing and then heating them with electromagnetic waves. This minimally invasive process can potentially replace higher-risk surgeries, thepaper.cn reported on Sept. 7.

Traditionally, cancer is treated with surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The first option is not always recommended, as some patients' health conditions do not allow it. The latter two, meanwhile, can cause internal damage and drastically affect patients’ quality of life.

“Our therapy is a dynamic integration of argon-helium cryoablation and radiofrequency ablation technologies. With a diameter of only 1 millimeter, the scalpel can penetrate the body via a small invasion. The freezing procedure can reduce tumor bleeding, and the radiofrequency ablation can significantly alleviate pain as well as postoperative complications,” said Xu Xueming, a researcher from Shanghai Jiaotong University’s School of Biomedical Engineering. Xu, who also leads the study, offered the comments during an interview with thepaper.cn.

Led by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the clinical study mainly focuses on liver cancer, and has been tested on 13 volunteer patients. None of the 13 have suffered postoperative complications so far, and their immune indices have improved relative to their preoperative conditions, thepaper.cn reported.