Therapeutic uses of atmospheric pressure plasma: Cancer and wound

Atmospheric pressure plasma (APP), composed of multiple active components, including charged particles, reactive oxygen species, and radicals, recently emerged as a promising tool in cancer therapy and wound treatment. Driven by the increasingly growing interests on plasma medicine, numerous in vivo tests and in vitro studies on the applicability of the APP for clinical treatments have been performed. In particular, the APP was shown to be effective in removing the targeted cells by causing apoptosis or necrosis. More importantly, in some studies, these effects were demonstrated to be specific to cancer cells, which was further confirmed in animal models where the APP effectively suppressed the tumor growth. In addition to the cancer therapy, the APP treatment targeting the chronic wound has shown that the plasma could improve the healing process by accelerating blood coagulation, bacteria sterilization, and re-epithelialization around the wounded area. Interestingly, the plasma therapy on cutaneous wound also presented promising outcomes in an animal study with reduced scar formations. In this chapter, we report a general overview of the recent trends and progresses in the effects of the APP treatment on cancer and wound, and discuss the potential applications of the APP as a therapeutic tool.