Zeitschrift für Zellwissenschaft und Therapie
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Millimeter Wave and Drug Induced Modulation of the Immune System -Application in Cancer Immunotherapy

Mahendra K. Logani, Mahendra K. Bhopale and Marvin C. Ziskin

In recent years several approaches have been used for the treatment of cancer. These include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy. Immunotherapy includes systemic administration of cytokines, adaptive transfer of activated T cells, NK cells, dendritic cells and macrophages. Immunotherapy is used to stimulate and train the patient’s immune system to fight against cancer. However, this approach alone is not sufficient. Therefore, a combination of immunotherapy with conventional chemo- and radiation therapy is commonly used for the treatment of cancer. But systemic administration of cytokines, such as interferons and interleukins, commonly used for immunotherapy, have their own toxic side effects that can be life threatening to many patients. In this article, we have reviewed the current knowledge of the effects of millimeter wave therapy (MMWT) on the immune system. MMWT, an alternative and complementary modality of treatment, is widely used for the treatment of cancer and many other diseases in Russia and several East European countries. However, it is virtually unknown to Western physicians. Our experimental studies have shown that MMWT when used in combination with chemotherapy protects the immune system from the toxicity of chemotherapy without introducing any additional toxicity of its own. Furthermore, our studies have shown that the combined millimeter wave- and chemotherapy can reduce the tumor metastasis, and tumor resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs. Thus combined therapy using MMWT provides a promising new strategy for the treatment of cancer.