Assessment of Direct and Fluid-Mediated Cold Atmospheric Plasma Treatment Efficacy on Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the second most common skin cancer among the white race. Plasma is an ionized gaseous state of matter containing chemically active species, such as ions, electrons, photons, reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, and UV light. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has just recently been showing promising anti-cancer activities supported by the ability to induce cell death via apoptosis and cell cycle arrest leading to tumor cell destruction in vitro and in vivo. In this study, two different plasma treatment methods, which are direct plasma treatment and fluid-mediated plasma treatment, apply on SCC and keratinocytes cell lines to determine lethal dose. Also, apoptotic behaviors of two cell types are evaluated with TiterTACS™ apoptosis detection kit. For direct plasma treatment, 60 seconds exposure to CAP found as optimum time and, for fluid-mediated plasma treatment 15 minutes holding of 30 seconds CAP exposure N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) solution found as optimum treatment time. Results show that CAP can selectively inactivate SCC cell line through apoptosis while no damage or apoptotic behavior observing in keratinocyte cell line.