Sensitization of glioblastoma cells to temozolomide by a helium gas discharge tube
Xiaoliang Yao, Li Lin, Vikas Soni, Eda Gjika, Jonathan H. Sherman, Dayun Yan, Michael Keidar
Abstract
Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive brain cancers. Chemotherapy is a standard modality for its therapy. Here, we demonstrated a novel strategy using a helium gas discharge tube as a tunable electromagnetic emission source to sensitize glioblastoma cells to the cytotoxicity of temozolomide (TMZ), a widely used drug for glioblastoma. After a single 7-min of treatment, the efficacy of TMZ was enhanced in two typical glioblastoma cell lines U87MG and A172 without affecting a normal human astrocyte cell line hTERT/E6/E7. The discharge tube is a non-invasive approach, which provides a safe, controllable, stable, and low-cost modality to improve the conventional chemotherapy.