Description
Cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP) is known as a source of biologically active agents, such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). Recent medical investigations have focused on applying CAP to cancer treatment. There is also growing evidence that exposure of cells to CAP or CAP-activated medium induces apoptosis in cancer cells, and ROS and/or RNS are considered to be effective agents to CAP-induced apoptosis. More recently, we demonstrated that Ar-CAP or Ar containing 2.5 % of N2 (Ar-N2-CAP) significantly induced apoptosis in human lymphoma U937 cells. However, a detailed molecular mechanism underling the induction of apoptosis by CAP in cancer cells is unclear.