Atmospheric plasma jet from micro nozzle array and its biological effects on living cells for cancer therapy

In this paper, we propose a miniature plasma-jet device for new cancer therapy and report the biological effects of atmospheric plasma on living cells found by investigating the DNA damage signal pathway. The micro plasma-jet device proposed in this paper has an array of 100 μm-size holes so that we can treat a large area with a cheap power system. After plasma treatment, we observed apoptotic cell death. In order to find underlying mechanism, we investigated the possibility of DNA double-strand breaks formation and ATM-mediated DNA damage signaling activation. The result illustrate that the nitrogen plasma induced DNA double-strand breaks activate ATM-mediated DNA damage signaling cascade, and also activate tumor suppressor p53 protein, and lead apoptotic cell death.