Here is the full transcript of Christine Gibbons’ talk titled “Using Sound Waves To Destroy Cancer” at TEDxDetroit 2017 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. By show of hands, which I can’t really see, how many out there have seen Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home? Okay. Well, I’m sure you recall that the crew time-travels back to 1986 San Francisco, and in this scene here, Dr. McCoy has to rescue Chekov from the barbaric medicine of the 20th century. Well, I’m here today to talk to you about another person that’s wrestling with and struggling with current modern day medicine.
Her name is Sue. Sue is a seamstress in Barcelona. She lives outside of the city and takes the train to work. She’s married to her high school sweetheart, and they have three children.
Sue’s Diagnosis
Apparently Sue has been having abdominal pains, bouts of nausea and vomiting, and so she went to her doctor. He ran a battery of tests, did an MRI, and she got that dreaded phone call, the diagnosis was cancer, liver cancer. And so she met with her oncologist and a surgeon, and they reviewed her case. More bad news.
The tumor was too large to be surgically resected, which meant the chances of long-term survival were greatly diminished. Also, the tumor was located in a place that made it difficult for this type of therapy, where large gauge needles are poked through the abdomen to the tumor, and the heat then kills the tumor. It was too close to a vein. So her doctor recommended chemotherapy.
Now Sue knew that chemotherapy would likely not cure her, but it would most certainly make her feel miserable for months to come. I’d now like to take you to the future, where Sue has the potential to be offered a therapy that uses sound energy rather than heat or incision or chemo to cure her.
Ultrasound has been used for many years for imaging, but researchers have been trying ways to use ultrasound to create heat to destroy tissues non-invasively. So Charles Kane from the University of Michigan was taking a different path. He was using, wanted to use the sound energy to create mechanical forces, not heat, to destroy tissue.
He and his colleagues at the University of Michigan actually found that the mechanical forces of sound could have great benefit. Those mechanical forces could actually be a lot more precise, and they have the potential for more rapid healing, quicker recovery, and less pain. So Charles and his colleagues, together with the university’s technology transfer office, licensed that technology to a newly formed company called HistoSonics.
And HistoSonics got to work developing a medical device that would be able to deliver histotripsy. And the most important component of that is the ultrasonic transducer. And the fundamental part of the ultrasonic transducer is the piezoelectric element. This, when electricity is applied to it, vibrates. And those vibrations then create an ultrasonic wave that can propagate through tissue.
Now by arranging an array of these elements in a concave formation, the transducer then becomes capable of transmitting ultrasonic waves that then increase sharply in strength at the focus. By pulsing those waves, we create the histotripsy effect to destroy tissue at the cellular level. Now based on this principle, the Vortex-RX is being developed to provide physicians the ability to noninvasively treat tissue. The transducer is placed over the target, in this case, a tumor in the liver.
How Histotripsy Works
Sound energy passes through the body to those tissues, creating an energy field that creates bubbles then. And the expansion and collapse of those bubbles is what mechanically then fractionates those tissues. Now other therapeutic ultrasound generates vibration that then creates heat to destroy those tissues, which could then potentially damage other tissues nearby not targeted because of thermal spread.
With histotripsy, that pulsing is provided in very, very short pulses that allows then a mechanical force, and so that the range of destruction of that tissue can be precisely controlled and monitored in real time. The tissue then gets naturally absorbed in the body after the treatment, and then natural healthy cells can regrow. This is an MRI image after a histotripsy treatment in a preclinical model. That dark circle there is the treatment zone. It’s the precise surgical-like boundaries that we treated where we wanted to and nowhere else.
Now imagine Sue being offered this therapy. She would lie down at a table, the transducer placed over her abdomen, sound waves then generating into the body. Now her physician could see in real time that treatment effect because the bubbles from histotripsy are very easily seen under ultrasound or MRI visualization. Sue could then maybe not even need general anesthesia. The precise targeted treatment of those tissues then without incision and without needles.
The Histosonics Team
Now this type of treatment then is brought forward in our company, Histosonics, and it takes a very special team. Here’s a picture of the team. Here’s me and my co-founders, Tom and Jim, and our first two employees, Russell and Dan. That’s me with the blonde hair.
And I love this picture because it was drawn by Russell’s daughter, Justine, and it, along with other art created by the employees’ children, graced the walls of our office at the company. And so the team here is driving this technology towards patient care, and it takes a very special team, as I said. We’ve been able to educate the medical device regulators throughout this time frame about the development of the device itself as well as the technology fundamentals. We’ve had to create new things and solve engineering challenges.
Spreading the Word
We’ve also had to tell our story. This team tells the story a lot. We tell the story to potential clinical collaborators. We tell the story to technology resources, and we tell the story to a lot of potential investors. We’re always ready to give a pitch to a potential investor.
And when pressed, I even gave a pitch at my own son’s wedding. And when we tell the story, we hear lots of things. Some people say, “That sounds like Star Trek. This could be the non-invasive healing device to replace barbaric medicine.” Others say, “That sounds like Star Trek. That’s too off in the future. That’s unrealistic.”
And when we get that feedback, it’s very helpful to us, because it helps us remember Sue and the millions of others who suffer from the pains of barbaric medicine of today. It helps us to refine the story of our message of the future of surgery, and the future of surgery is becoming a reality right here in the Detroit area. We expect to treat our first patient early next year.
Conclusion
And so when we’re here today to share positive ideas with the world from Detroit, and I’d like to say, my positive idea, besides fighting disease with sound, is to remember Sue. And to remember the millions of others who have that feeling of hopelessness. Because when we remember them, and those who have the life’s work in healthcare, we remember the ultimate reason why we do what we do. Thank you.