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

25 Billion per gram = 25 bucks per nanogram

[Chmcginn]

Well, considering that the current crop of particle-beam based cancer treatments being developed is using a stream of protons. If the kinetic impact of high-speed protons is a high enough energy level, than a stream of positrons would do the trick nicely... and considering that PET is already used in medicine, I doubt the increase in the amount of positrons needed would be (that big of a) cost factor. (At least not compared to the cost of the actual trials.)

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

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, my mother died of the same thing last year (she went into surgery a year ago yesterday). Those sorts of treatments are years away at best, and even if they're exceptionally effective, they still may not be set up for killing an aggressive fast spreading cancer like a Glioblastoma Multiforme...Right now those are pretty much universally fatal.

Anyway, it's always easy to say, "Well they should have rushed this thing forward" but the truth of it is, they've cured a lot of types of cancer...in mice. Making the jump to people is not going as well.