Boiling histotripsy for the treatment of melanoma
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Despite the clear efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade, a subset of melanoma patients receives no clinical benefit from treatment. Boiling histotripsy (BH), a mechanical form of focused ultrasound, allows for non-invasive and non-ionizing tissue destruction. As mechanically fractionating tumors with BH has been shown to result in a bolus of tumor antigen dissemination to the tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLNs), we tested whether conventional dendritic cell (cDC) trafficking was mediating this effect and subsequent downstream T-cell responses. While we utilized two orthogonal approaches to abrogate the CCR7-CCL19/21 chemotactic gradient that cDCs use to migrate from the periphery to the TDLN, we were unable to determine whether liberated tumor antigen was making its way to the TDLNs independent of cDC trafficking. Challenges involving (i) the inconsistency of BH to impede tumor outgrowth and liberate tumor antigen, and (ii) technical variables in the bone marrow chimera systems and adoptive transfer preparations hindered our ability to draw definitive conclusions from these studies.
Authors: Timothy N.J. Bullock, Richard Price
Language: English
Subfield: Immunology
Field: Immunology and Microbiology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7202209876