Apr 14/08 )- Inventor John Kanzius has come up with one of the biggest cancer treatment breakthroughs in years. A cancer patient himself, one day he came up with the idea of using radio waves to destroy tumors. |
As a radio technician, he knew that strong radio waves would cause metal to heat up by a limited amount. He figured that if they could inject tumors with a liquified metal solution and then bombard it with high powered radio waves, the metal would heat up a bit, enough to kill the surrounding tumor and leave healthy tissue undamaged.
After doing some preliminary testing, he met with Dr. Steven Curley, a liver cancer surgeon, and Rick Smalley, the man who won the Nobel Prize for discovering nanoparticles (nano shells). Those microscopic spheres had already been shown to have an affinity for tumours (see article from june 22, 2007) so the thought was to use the radio waves to heat up metallic nano particles that had been absorbed in cancer tissue; and see if they would heat up and destroy the tumor, without side effects.
Sure enough, animal experiments were shown to work. The team has a 100% success rate in destroying tumors in animals!
But destroying tumors is not enough. The crucial issue is that for a cancer treatment to be called a "cure", it must not only destroy identified tumours; but also destroy any cancer cells in the bloodstream, as these will often lodge somewhere and start a new round of cancer.
To accomplish that, the team is experimenting with fusing antibodies to the nano shells, in order to make them target individual cancer cells. Ideally, an injection of nanoparticles would result in them adhering to any cancerous cells in the body; after which the person would be bombarded with otherwise harmless radio waves that would heat the nano spheres and destroy all cancer cells - resulting in a cure.
The success of this promising treatment will rely on the results of the 'targeting' tests, and on human trials expected in a couple of years.
For more information, please see the full article on John Kanzius and his amazing work at CBS News.
Update Mar 17/09 )-John Kanzius died on Feb.18, 2009. He passed away in Florida; from pneumonia after being weakened from chemotherapy. RIP.
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