PFI-TT: Cold plasma technology to enable a future cancer treatment device to reduce surgical margins

该创新-技术转化伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力解决了治疗癌症手术中确定的手术切缘或边缘的重要需求。拟议的活动将是开发被称为“冷大气等离子体”的创新技术，以治疗肿瘤边缘和癌症手术中涉及的其他区域。 该技术将更接近市场准备，可能会影响国民经济的几个部门，包括医疗设备和科学设备。此外，包括研究生和博士后科学家在内的相关研究人员的职业生涯将通过增加他们在新兴血浆医学领域的网络和提高他们的领导技能而受益。其中一名博士后将被提升为该项目的技术商业化专家。此外，该项目的成功实施还得益于研究合作伙伴之间的合作，这些研究合作伙伴由等离子体材料科学和生物医学研究领域的世界领先专家组成了一个高素质的财团。该项目融合了多功能等离子体源的新工程努力和针对癌症治疗的生物材料表面处理的杰出进展。该项目具有跨学科性质，具有基础和技术意义。其根本意义在于探索冷大气等离子体的医疗作用，特别是等离子体与肿瘤和手术切缘的相互作用。为此，一个灵活的，变形的等离子体装置，适用于任何表面形貌将制造。此外，将采用广泛的诊断仪器以及用于体外测试的化学和生物传感器，这基本上构成了该项目的技术意义。等离子体状态的基本特征是光学等离子体诊断。通过电子显微镜监测形貌，以及评价化学成分和生物学特性，将评估处理表面的最终状态。其主要目标是对非平面和精细材料进行均匀处理，以实现生物医学应用，特别是对有机组织进行等离子体处理，重点是癌症治疗应用。总之，该项目将率先通过扩展变形等离子体源治疗复杂几何表面，重点是肿瘤和手术切缘的治疗。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project addresses the important need of treating the surgical margins, or edges, identified in cancer operations. The proposed activity will be to develop innovative technology known as "cold atmospheric plasma" to treat the edges of tumors and other areas involved in cancer surgeries. The technology will be advanced closer to market readiness, potentially impacting several sectors of the national economy, including medical equipment and scientific devices. Also, the careers of the involved researchers, which include graduate students and postdoctoral scientists, will be benefited by increasing their networks in the emerging field of plasma medicine and enhancing their leadership skills. In particular, one of the postdocs will be promoted as technology commercialization expert in this project. In addition, the successful implementation of the proposed project is ensured by the cooperation among the research partners, which constitute a highly qualified consortium with world-leading experts in plasma-material science and biomedical research.The proposed project merges novel engineering efforts towards a versatile plasma source and outstanding advances in surface treatment of biomaterials aiming to cancer therapy. The proposed project has an interdisciplinary nature and it has both fundamental and technological significances. The fundamental significance resides in exploring medical action of cold atmospheric plasmas, in particular plasma interaction with tumor and surgical margins. For this, a flexible, morphing plasma device adaptable to any surface topography will be fabricated. Also, a wide spectrum of diagnostic instrumentations, and chemical and biological sensors for in vitro tests will be employed, which basically constitutes the technological significance of the project. Plasma state will be characterized basically by optical plasma diagnostics. The monitoring of topographies by electron microscopy, as well as evaluation of the chemical composition and biological properties, will assess the end state of the treated surfaces. The main goal consists in uniform treatment of non-planar and delicate materials with the aim of biomedical applications, especially plasma treatment of organic tissues with focus on cancer therapy applications. In summary, this project will pioneer the treatment of complex geometry surfaces by means of an extended morphing plasma source, with emphasis on treatment of tumors and of surgical margins.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.