Project description
Gas plasma therapy for precancerous skin condition
Actinic keratosis is a common skin condition characterised by the presence of rough patches or lesions on the skin. It is considered a precancerous condition with a small percentage of actinic keratosis lesions progressing to become squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PlasmaACT project aims to treat actinic keratosis using gas plasma therapy, a type of ionised gas consisting of ions, electrons, and neutral particles. At ambient air, these plasmas generate free radicals. This promising technology has already found application in wound healing and treatment of other dermatology conditions. PlasmaACT researchers will advance this technology to support skin cancer prevention and offer an effective and affordable treatment for actinic keratosis.
Objective
The quality of human (and veterinary) health care systems substantially depends on key innovations. Often, these were driven by the field of physics, followed by interdisciplinary and inter-sectorial actions in engineering, chemistry, biology, and medicine, such as X-rays in medical diagnostics, ionizing radiation in cancer treatment, and femtosecond lasers for precision surgery. Medical gas plasma technology was introduced to human health care a decade ago. Today, accredited medical plasma devices are in daily operation in dozen dermatology centers in middle Europe to improve wound healing. In addition, physical plasmas were shown to inactivate cancerous cells. Actinic Keratosis is a skin disease affecting millions of Europeans and making them prone to invasive and deadly skin cancer. Many of the available treatment options are associated with low efficacy, pain, risks, and/or high costs. Medical gas plasma technology is operated at body temperature and applied painlessly, cost-effectively, and without notable side effects. Gas plasma has been suggested to be active on high-grade cancer cells, but its activity against premalignant cells, as in Actinic Keratosis, is unknown. By using beyond state-of-the-art plasma multijet technology, the primary technical objective of PlasmACT – Plasma against Actinic Keratosis – is to support skin cancer prevention by medical gas plasma therapy of Actinic Keratosis. PlasmACT does so by educating a new generation of application-oriented scientists that are exposed to questions and findings from different scientific fields (interdisciplinary from physics over chemistry and biology to medicine) and capable of addressing questions in view of both academic as well as business needs (inter-sectoral) while incorporated in a vivid and productive environment across borders and cultures (international).
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-DN - HORIZON TMA MSCA Doctoral NetworksCoordinator
17489 Greifswald
Germany