As a safe and minimal-invasive modality, thermal therapy has become an effective treatment in cancer treatment. Other than killing the tumor cells or destroying the tumor entirely, the thermal modality results in profound molecular, cellular and biological effects on both the targeted tissue, surrounding environments, and even the whole body, which has triggered the combination of the thermal therapy with other traditional therapies as chemotherapy and radiation therapy or new therapies like immunotherapy, gene therapy, etc. The combined treatments have shown encouraging therapeutic effects both in research and clinic. In this review, we have summarized the outcomes of the existing synergistic therapies, the underlying mechanisms that lead to these improvements, and the latest research in the past five years. Limitations and future directions of synergistic thermal therapy are also discussed.

By taking advantage of the inherent flexibility of low-cost 3D printing materials, we achieved an optical focus tuning accuracy of ~5 micron with a novel structure design. It shrinks the mechanical displacement by a factor of ~11 through a seesaw-like component. Combing with the built-in flashlight illumination and an off-the-shelf smartphone lens, the total manufacturing cost of our smartphone-based microscope is less than 4 USD. We demonstrated the capability of this design in imaging thick biological specimens. We further applied this device in the cell culture monitoring of VX2 tumor cells because of its portability and flexibility.