ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Oncology in Veterinary Medicine
This article is part of the Research TopicPrecision Diagnosis and Targeted Therapies in Companion Animal OncologyView all 3 articles
ASSESSMENT OF HISTOTRIPSY AS A BONE-SPARING TUMOR ABLATION TECHNIQUE IN EX VIVO OSTEOSARCOMA TUMOR-AFFECTED LIMBS
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States
- 2Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, United States
- 3Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Blacksburg, VA, United States
- 4Virginia Tech Animal Cancer Care and Research Center, Blacksburg, VA, United States
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ABSTRACT: Osteosarcoma (OS) is an aggressive bone cancer that is highly resistant to conventional therapies. Histotripsy is a non-invasive, non-thermal ablation technique that uses ultrasound to mechanically destroy tissue and has been recently explored as a novel treatment for OS in a canine comparative anatomy model with heterogeneous tumor phenotypes consisting of mixed lytic and sclerotic lesions. However, the effects of histotripsy on the biomechanics of OS tumor-affected bone and surrounding grossly normal bone have not been investigated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the biomechanical effects of histotripsy on OS tumor-affected and normal bone and to characterize tumor heterogeneity. Using ex vivo limbs from canine OS patients (n=10), histotripsy ablation was performed on tumor-affected and normal bone specimens, with corresponding unablated tumor and normal controls. Mechanical testing, including uniaxial compression and 3-point bending, revealed significantly higher elastic and post-yield properties in normal bone specimens compared to tumor-affected specimens. No significant differences were detected within normal or within tumor-affected bone groups, indicating that histotripsy does not detrimentally affect the structural integrity of normal bone or further damage that of tumor-affected bone. Trabecular unablated tumor specimens exhibited higher and broader elastic modulus and ultimate strength values compared to other groups, highlighting OS tumor heterogeneity. μCT analysis confirmed this variability, demonstrating differences in bone volume fraction across specimens. The results of the current work support the development and advancement of histotripsy as a potential non-invasive, bone-sparing, patient-specific treatment option for clinical OS.
Keywords: Histotripsy, Osteosarcoma, Bone, tumor, ablation, Biomechanics, μCT
Received: 23 Jun 2025; Accepted: 18 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Achari, Vickers, Ruger, Vlaisavljevich, Tuohy and Collins. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Caitlyn J Collins, cjcollins@vt.edu
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