Tumor-treating fields for glioblastoma and lung cancer

I have recently lost a friend, Dave Waltz, to glioblastoma, and a few years ago lost a friend of our family, Colby Hewitt, to the same cancer. Tumor-treating fields (TTF) have brought to fruition the ingenious idea of Dr. Yoram Palti to use alternating electric fields to disrupt the delicate orchestration of mitotic spindle formation during cell divisions. So the fast-growing cells in the brain, i.e. the cancer cells, are the ones affected, and since most other cells in the brain either do not reproduce or do so slowly, normal brain function is not disrupted in the period of treatment time.

There are several types of ions involved in mitotic spindle formation, including the spindle, helper cells that form the spindle, and the chromosomes. TTF could affect one or more of these necessary participants.

According to the company, the disruption of cell division leads to apoptotis (programmed cell death) of the cancer cells–i.e. I gather other cell processes designed to be trigger apoptosis when abnormalities are detected are signaled by the inability of the cell to complete spindle formation.

Here is the overview from the company, Novocure, a key paper, and an excellent, lucid exposition of the physics underlying TTF.

http://www.novocure.com/ttf_therapy.php?ID=16

Kirson et al-Alternating electric fields arrest cell proliferation in animal models and human brain tumors-PNAS-2007.pdf

Jones-Basic theory of dielectrophoresis and electrorotation-IEEE EngMedMag2003.pdf