Biomedical Applications of Low Temperature Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas to Cancerous Cell Treatment and Tooth Bleaching

Abstract

Low temperature atmospheric pressure plasmas have attracted great interests and they have been widely applied to biomedical applications to interact with living tissues, cells, and bacteria due to their non-thermal property. This paper reviews the biomedical applications of low temperature atmospheric pressure plasmas to cancerous cell treatment and tooth bleaching. Gold nanoparticles conjugated with cancer-specific antibodies have been introduced to cancerous cells to enhance selective killing of cells, and the mechanism of cell apoptosis induced by plasma has been investigated. Tooth exposed to helium plasma jet with hydrogen peroxide has become brighter and the productions of hydroxyl radicals from hydrogen peroxide have been enhanced by plasma exposure. (C) 2011 The Japan Society of Applied Physics