Anti-Matter's Potential in Treating Cancer

eldavojohn writes "The BBC is taking a look at how atomic physicists are developing cancer treatments. A step past radiotherapy, the CERN institute is publishing interesting results: 'Cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, causing intense biological damage leading to cell death.' The press release from last year is finally sparking interest in the medical community."

Comments

brilliant

[Lord Ender]

There are a lot of things that kill cancer cells. It's finding the things that kill exclusively cancer cells that's the hard part.

Re:brilliant

[jd]

What's wrong with a gamma knife? (Uses eight sources, none of which are exceptionally dangerous in themselves, such that the area of overlap is totally lethal.)

For that matter, since cancer cells tend to generate heat, the cancerous region should be nearer the point of cell death than non-cancerous tissue. Use microwaves to raise the water temperature such that healthy cells will still be below the threshold but cancer cells are cooked.

Alternatively, cancer cells must pull in far more amino acids than healthy cells simply to duplicate so rapidly. Synthesize some amino acids that use an isotope you know the frequency for a-la x-ray fluorescence. Beam in some x-rays at the required frequency. The isotope will absorb them and emit electrons. Because the cancerous cells have more of the isotope, they will have more electrons blasting around. I would have thought you could do some really nasty things to the cancer before the healthy cells even noticed the extra charge on their bill.

Re:Ah yes..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is if you're a robot who wants to get high. Think about it. It would probably work.

Re:What about this?

[Billosaur]

People already get bombarded by radiation to kill tumor cells -- this isn't that much different, except that the damage to the tumor is more direct and probably at a higher concentration than with ordinary bursts of radiation. You get the twin effect of the anti-particles annihilating their particle counterparts and the secondary radiation (mainly gamma) given off by that annihilation.

Re:What about this?

[yotto]

Personally, I'd be more turned off by the idea of a growth of runaway cells taking over my body and killing me. If I had it, I'd happily let them dump a bit of antimatter in me, rather than DIE.

Re:Ah yes..

[profplump]

As opposed to cancer?

Or the current radition and chemical treatments?

Re:Thought Cancer was already Cured

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, kick those evil pharmesutical companies. They don't spend *BILLIONS* on frivolous lawsuits or anything. It's not like 1 well publicised mistake isn't enough to destroy the ENTIRE COMPANY.

Re:A little pricey

[Eric Smith]

That's for production and storage. Production and immediate use (irradiating an object such as a patient) doesn't involve that much operational expense. The big expense is the capital equipment outlay, which has to be amortized over a very large number of treatments.

Re:So how do we administer it?

[MadnessASAP]

I believe what you're thinking about black holes Antimatter annihilates anything it touches along with itself in a 1:1 ratio releasing E=MC^2 amount of energy. PS I guess that makes using antimatter to remove a 1 lb tumor the equivalent of setting off a nuke then?

Reo-virus may kill 2/3 of all cancers.

[fahrbot-bot]

It's finding the things that kill exclusively cancer cells that's the hard part.

You mean like this...

Reo-virus, or respiratory enteric orphan virus, is naturally occurring and believed to cause mild infections of the upper respiratory and gastro-intestinal tract in humans. However, in testing mice with implanted human cancer tumours, Lee and his team of researchers were able to show that reo-virus also has the ability to selectively kill a wide variety of cancer cells.

...Lee's findings have indicated that approximately two thirds of cancers cells bear an active Ras pathway and the remaining cells can be treated with a particular chemical to deactivate their anti-bodies against viruses.

If only treatments like these were ready in 2005... My wife of 20 years was diagnosed with a brain tumor (GBM) Thanksgiving 2005 and died in January 13, 2006. Nothing is special any more...

Re:no poisons or radiation is required to cure can

[porcupine8]

But of course there is no money to be made by telling people all they have to do is follow the proper diet

WTF? Tell that to the late Dr. Atkins. Hell, there are plenty of books out there now specifically about treating cancer through diet (though most are responsible enough to view it as a supplement to rather than replacement for traditional therapies), and they sell. If your dad had any actual proof, trust me, he'd be a rich man.

Re:Reo-virus may kill 2/3 of all cancers.

[dreamchaser]

Try posting on a non AC account next time. Oh that's right, you are a coward so you won't.

I *almost* hope *you* suffer a terrible loss, but two wrongs don't make a right.

People like you are good for society in a way though. You're a doctoral dissertation waiting to happen for some lucky psychology major.

They are NOT using Anti-matter

[styryx]

Disclaimer: Physicist.

E=mc^2, anyone? Anti-matter would be impossible to use here.

The misconception arises in that the methods used to create anti-matter (i.e. particle accelerators) are being employed in order to treat cancer. Think of it more as a particle beam treatment. Instead of using X-rays, they are using ion-beams to target the cancer. This reduces collateral damage by orders of magnitude and so is an extremely good alternative to Chemotherapy. NB: It is not a cure; at least not at this stage. There is more news to come next week from the same people, btw... good news!

Please can someone change the article to correct that anti-matter is not being used.