Study on array antennas combined with nanoparticles for enhanced microwave hyperthermia of breast cancer

Tumor hyperthermia is to heat tumor tissue with biological thermal effect that can kill cancer cells when achieved effective treatment temperature. However, the temperature distribution of hyperthermia is uneven and it can not be accurately oriented to the tumor region. In this paper, an array antenna which can realize large-scale heating was designed for tumor microwave hyperthermia. ZrMOF-Cys nanoparticles (ZMC NPs) were prepared as the sensitizer of microwave hyperthermia. In the experiment of hyperthermia, array antenna and ZMC NPs are combined to achieve the goal of conformal hyperthermia and enhance the effect of hyperthermia. ZMC NPs have excellent heating effect, biodegradability and low cytotoxicity. ZMC NPs were injected into tumorbearing BALB/c mice by tail vein. Due to enhanced permeability and retention effect (EPR), ZMC NPs can enrich tumor sites to the greatest extent at 6 h. After 6 h of injection, the mice were treated with array antenna. The experimental results indicate that the combination of array antenna and ZMC NPs makes the temperature of tumor site higher than that of surrounding normal tissue, which has an excellent therapeutic effect, and the tumor inhibition rate reaches 87.52%. Phantom models experiments are also proved that the combination of array antenna and ZMC NPs can achieve the effect of conformal thermotherapy. This work provides a new direction for the development of conformal hyperthermia.