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Treating Cancer with Beams of Anti-Matter

Posted by michael on from the dr.-mccoy-is-more-dangerous-than-he-looks dept.

Zeinfeld writes "According to this Economist article scientists at CERN are using beams of antimatter to destroy cancer cells. The basic idea is that you make some anti-protons, whizz them round in a accelerator to get them moving at a decent rate then fire them at living tissue. They burrow down to the desired depth, find a friendly proton and do a spot of mutual anihilation, releasing sufficient energy in the process to kill a cell or two. The trick is that matter/anti-matter anihilation is a bit like nuclear fission, it does not work if the particles are moving too fast. The anti-proton has to be moving slowly enough to get pulled into the orbit of some atomic nucleus and actually collide. This allows the treatment to be fine tuned so it only affects the tissues at a very specific depth - unlike traditional therapies which zap everything in the line of fire."

7 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So hospitals... by confused+one · · Score: 3, Informative

    Many hospitals already have particle accelerators in them. It's just a matter of scaling them up...

  2. Antimatter by (trb001) · · Score: 4, Informative

    For dolts (like me) who had no clue what antimatter really is, I found this article over at Scientific American that gives a good overview and explains what exactly (and why) antimatter is. It's readable, too, to a non-physics geek.

    --trb

  3. Re:Zap everything in the line of fire??? by Dastardly · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ever heard of a Bragg Peak?

    Ever heard of multi-beam treatment?

    Sheesh!

    Actually, if you read the article instead of the Slashdot synopsis. The point of using anti-protons is that you get the same effect as Bragg Peak (didn't know the name until you mentioned it thanks!) with regular protons. In addition, shortly after dumping most of the ionization energy into the tumor tissue, the anti-proton meets a proton causing more damage at the targeted location. I think the idea is that even while proton treatments can be well targeted they still deliver radiation doses to intervening tissue, by using anti protons you can deliver more radiation for the same dose to intervening tissue.

  4. Stone Age Medicine by mcelrath · · Score: 5, Informative
    Beam therapy, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy are all nothing more than stone-age attempts at medicine. They are essentially high-tech versions of "Let's beat it with a big stick until it goes away". Their success rates are not great. Since they don't address the fundamental problem, there's no guarantee that the cancer won't recur. I have much more hope for genetic and other biologic treatments that are upcoming.

    Fermilab has had a neutron beam therapy very similar to the CERN anti-proton therapy since 1976. Neutrons are radioactive by themselves with a half life of about 14 minutes. Once deposited in some tissue they will either decay or combine with an atom to form a radioactive isotope (which then decays).

    There are other unique radio therapies including Brachytherapy (place radioactive isotopes in the tumor) and Radioimmunotherapy (attach a radioactive isotope to a nonoclonal antibody). The latter sounds very neat and targeted. But none address the fundamental problem -- why do cells turn cancerous.

    -- Bob

    --
    1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
    1. Re:Stone Age Medicine by yet+another+coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I used to believe as you do. The treatments you list are aimed at killing cancer cells. A big stick, however, does not discriminate well. Swing it, and it bops whatever is in its way. These treatments are more toxic to cancer cells than to normal cells. The damaged caused by radiation beams is more lethal to malignant cells than to normal cells. The same holds for chemotherapy drugs. In general, cancer cells divide faster than normal cells. Many cancer treatments target aspects of cell division. Your points about the need for better targeting and specificity is definitely true.

      We know many reasons that cells turn cancerous. They accumulate genetic mutations that allow them to divide and spread without responding to normal signals that inhibit those processes. The genetics of particular tumors and even of particular tumor types remains an area of intense research.

      The causes of mutations are many. One is the intrinsic randomness of enzymes within cells. They make mistakes. DNA enzymes can introduces mistakes, and they can fail to repair mistakes. Some chemicals and some forms of radiation can damage DNA. Certain people are more likely to incur such damage over a lifetime than others because their starting genetic makeup includes defects.

      It would be wonderful to have therapies that reverse harmful mutations. No such therapies exist. I know of no research pursuing such therapies. Instead, the goal of all cancer therapies is to kill malignant cells.

  5. Re:in line of fire - OR NOT! by regen · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't have any idea what your talking about, do you?

    X-Ray therapy would involve gamma particles (aka photons) not alpha particles. Alpha particles are ionized helium.

    As for the whole, spin thing, you must be smoking crack.

    What is sometimes done, is stereotactic radiotherapy. Multiple beams of gamma rays are aimed so that they all cross at a single point. Each beam by itself won't cause much damage, but at the point where they cross, the combined dose is enought to kill the tumor. You can also do this by spining a weak beam for an extended period of time. Maybe that is what you meant?

    --
    The Economics of Website Security
  6. Re:So hospitals... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    By way of explaination, PET (positron emission tomography) scanners require particle accelerators in order to produce on-demand isotopes with very short half-lifes. Thus, any hospital with a PET scanner already has a particle accelerator.