Sulis V controls the delivery of microwaves to the applicator An
advanced thermal ablation technique developed by UK firm
Microsulis Medical could help to improve the treatment of
tumours. Last year was officially designated the year of
radiotherapy, marking 100 years since Marie Curie won a second
Nobel Prize for her work on radium. Radiotherapy is still an
important part of the armoury in the fight against cancer, but
in the past decade or so other parts of the electromagnetic
spectrum have been exploited for the purpose of treating
tumours, offering certain benefits. For a start, one of the
central paradoxes and problems of radiotherapy is that, while
the radiation does a good job of killing malignant cells by
damaging their DNA, it can also cause new, secondary tumours
through the build-up of genetic errors in healthy cells. By
contrast, newer techniques use lower frequencies to essentially
heat cancer cells locally to a temperature that is cytotoxic - a
phenomenon termed thermal ablation. ‘All medical de