Our Focus

Supporting groundbreaking oncotripsy research at Caltech to fight cancer.

Research

Funding studies that explore how oncotripsy targets tumors precisely.

Trials

Backing clinical trials that bring oncotripsy closer to patients.

Highlighting benefits over radiation and chemotherapy methods.

Impact

WHY?

This foundation was established in memory of Joyce Olson.

Joyce was a mother of three and the spouse of the author of this website. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 51 in early 1993, and underwent surgery at the University of Minnesota. Her oncologist proclaimed that the cancer had been completely removed.

However, she had to endure aggressive chemotherapy—the standard approach at that time. This treatment caused irreversible damage to her body.

In the subsequent years, Joyce underwent several abdominal surgeries as her gastrointestinal system deteriorated.

Following her third surgery, her surgeon, Dr. Daniel Cortez, conveyed to the family the extent of the damage: “I had to try to separate her intestines due to the harm caused by the chemotherapy, which made her insides soft and sticky.” Joyce lived in chronic pain and severe disability for seven years until her passing in June 2000.

Her experience prompts a vital question:
Why do patients continue to suffer and perish from treatment-induced injuries while safer, non-toxic, and mechanically-based alternatives remain underfunded, underexplored, and delayed for decades?

It is primarily about profit! Our medical system is profit-driven, and curing diseases does not yield the same profits as managing them.

This foundation is committed to ensuring that oncotripsy is made available, and in so doing help prevent others from experiencing what Joyce and many others have endured over the years due to the excessive use of cytotoxic substances.

Where do your Donations go to?

To Support groundbreaking "oncotripsy research" at Caltech and other associated research research groups to transform cancer treatment.

All donations are used only for Oncotripsy research and clinical trials. The subsequent goal will be FDA approval.

Joyce Olson 1942-2000

“First, do no harm”
(Primum non nocere)

(Hippocratic Oath)

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Oncotripsy is an experimental, non-invasive cancer treatment concept that uses focused mechanical ultrasound forces—rather than heat, radiation, or chemicals—to physically disrupt and destroy cancer cells while largely sparing healthy tissue.

It is sometimes described as a mechanical cousin of ultrasound ablation, but the underlying mechanism is fundamentally different.

Core Concept:

Cancer cells are mechanically weaker and less elastic than normal cells.
Oncotripsy attempts to exploit this weakness by:

• Applying precisely tuned low frequency ultrasound vibrations

• Generating intense mechanical stress and micro-vibrations

• Causing cancer cells to rupture, fragment, or lose structural integrity

• Leaving surrounding healthy cells relatively unharmed due to their greater stiffness and resilience

Think of it as selectively shaking cancer cells apart rather than burning or poisoning the

The core idea is that:

• Cancer cells have distinct viscoelastic and structural properties (different stiffness, morphology, nuclear size, and cytoskeletal organization) compared with normal cells.

• These differences produce different natural resonant frequencies and mechanical responses when subjected to sound waves.

• By tuning the ultrasound parameters (frequency, pulse duration, etc.), it may be possible to cause destructive resonant vibrations in cancer cells but not in healthy cells.

The concept was first articulated in theoretical and computational studies and has since been explored in cell-culture experiments demonstrating selective cancer cell disruption in vitro.

Why This Matters (Scientific Basis)

1. Resonant Mechanical Differences

The method exploits the mechanical resonant behavior of cells:

• Cancer cells, being softer and structurally different, have distinct resonant response characteristics.

• When ultrasound is applied at a resonant frequency for tumor cells, the induced vibrations can exceed their mechanical tolerance, leading to membrane rupture.

• Healthy cells, with different mechanical dynamics, respond much less or not at all at those same parameters.

Because the target is mechanical resonance, not molecular markers or heat, it represents a fundamentally different therapeutic concept from many existing cancer treatments.

Experimental and Development Status

In Vitro Evidence

Research published by Caltech scientists showed that:

• Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound at specific frequencies resulted in selective cancer cell death in cell suspension experiments.

• Healthy blood cells remained largely unharmed under the same conditions.

Stage of Development:

As of the latest reports-

• The work remains proof-of-concept and preclinical.

• It has not yet been validated in live animals or humans.

• Key challenges remain in translating frequency tuning into a clinical therapy that can target tumors in a complex tissue environment.

How Oncotripsy Differs From Traditional Ultrasound Cancer Therapy

Conventional therapeutic ultrasound (e.g., high-intensity focused ultrasound, HIFU) typically relies on intense energy to heat and thermally ablate tissue, which can harm both cancerous and healthy cells near the target site.

Oncotripsy, by contrast, aims to:

• Use low intensity sound waves,

• Rely on resonance and mechanical vulnerability of cancer cells,

• Minimize collateral damage by exploiting intrinsic physical differences between cell types.

Summary:

Oncotripsy is a promising research concept in which tuned low-intensity ultrasound may be used to selectively disrupt cancer cells based on their distinct mechanical properties.
It has been demonstrated in cell models but remains unproven as a clinical treatment.

It's time to save some lives and get this treatment into trials and on the market!

Lee Olson, Website author

Why do optional treatments for cancer never seem available?

The combination of institutional inertia, financial disincentives, and regulatory roadblocks has prevented frequency-based pathogen destruction from becoming mainstream—not necessarily because it doesn’t work, (Of course it is used extensively in medicine finally as "ultrasound or histotripsy"), but because it doesn’t fit the current system’s model. That model is based purely on profit.

"It is way past time for the people themselves to change the equation."

Lee Olson, Website Author

Click here