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Morphological Changes of Melanoma Cells Induced by Pulsed Terahertz Radiation

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Abstract

Strong terahertz (THz) waves can induce a series of biological effects including morphology changes in living cells. Morphology change is an intuitive indicator of biological effects and would be helpful for understanding these effects. Up to now, only several cells’ morphology changes induced by THz waves have been investigated. Related reports are not found for tumor or cancer cells. We preliminary investigated in vitro the effects of melanoma cells exposed to our strong broadband pulsed THz source (500 mW/cm2, 1 kHz repetition rate). After 3 h irradiation, we observed obvious morphological changes on most of these cancer cells with an increase of 4° in temperature. Under the same conditions but suppressing the increase of temperature by reducing the repetition rate of THz source to 100 Hz, morphological changes were not observed. Those morphological changes in melanoma cells exposed to THz source with an intensity of 500 mW/cm2 and a repetition rate of 1 kHz could be attributed mainly to the thermal effects caused by THz waves. The recovery of morphology of the irradiated melanoma cells as well as the similar apoptosis rate of the THz-irradiated melanoma cells and that of the controls indicates that both the thermal and nonthermal effects would not induce fatal and permanent damages to the melanoma cells under the condition of current parameters of our THz source.

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Funding

This work is supported by NSAF (Grant No. U2030119) and partly by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0701000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China

    Huan Zhou & Julia Li Zhong

  2. Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chongqing, 400714, China

    Huan Zhou, Xiao-Yu Peng & Yangjiuzhou Gou

  3. Chongqing School, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS Chongqing), Chongqing, 400714, China

    Huan Zhou

  4. Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, China

    Desheng Pei

  5. Medical Center of Hematology, Xinqiao Hospital, Army Medical University, Chongqing, 400037, People’s Republic of China

    Xi Zhang

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  1. Huan Zhou
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Contributions

X.-Y. Peng and H. Zhou conceived the experiment. H. Zhou performed all the experiment, data analyzing, and preparing the manuscript. X.-Y. Peng designed the experimental setup, supervised the experiment, and contributed main modifications to the manuscript. Y. Gou participated most of the experiments. D. Pei, X. Zhang, and J. L. Zhong provided some suggestions and modified the manuscript. The manuscript was discussed and approved by all the authors.

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Correspondence to Xiao-Yu Peng.

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Zhou, H., Peng, XY., Gou, Y. et al. Morphological Changes of Melanoma Cells Induced by Pulsed Terahertz Radiation. J Infrared Milli Terahz Waves 43, 829–842 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-022-00880-4

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