Biological basis for hyperthermia in cancer treatment

Controlled studies over the last 10-15 years have detailed some of the cellular effects of hyperthermia alone or in combination with other agents. This review describes advances in understanding the biological basis for hyperthermic cell killing and how it can interact with other modalities to improve cancer cell killing. Several problems that arise in the use of hyperthermia in cancer treatment are briefly discussed, namely, the induction of transient thermotolerance to that killing and difficulty in delivering and measuring heat doses to many body sites.<>