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Magnetic Nanoparticles Fry Tumors
sciencehabit writes "In a new study, a team found that injecting mice with tiny magnets and cranking up the heat eliminated tumors from the animals' bodies with no apparent side effects. The nanoparticles heat up when a magnetic field is applied, and because they are only injected into tumors, only cancerous cells get fried. Researchers hope the technique, known as magnetic hyperthermia, could be used in cancer patients, obviating the need for chemotherapy and radiation."
The problem is targeting only the tumour with the pill contents. If we had the ability to deliver oral drugs -only- to a tumour, then we could just use targeted chemo treatments and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, it's not that simple, so we need alternatives.
Part of the problem with turmours is that cutting anything out can spread the tumour by leaving mobile particles and injecting drugs directly allows them to spread to other (life-essential) organs.
Because these magnetic particles are less mobile than drugs, there is a good chance they'll tend to stay put and only damage the tumour and local tissue, rather than harming the organism as a whole.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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The fact that this approach would require initial radio-imaging (CT/MRI/PET) doesn't take away from its value. Most cancer patients have to have several rounds of CT/MRI/PET scans anyway. It's required to do the initial diagnosis/prognosis/staging/etc. So treating cancer in many cases is already about making this trade off. Radio-therapy (radiation) is a great example. You can kill off any remaining cancer cells, but you do so knowing there is a much greater probability for certain cancers down the road (particularly those cancers related to the thyroid).
There are a few problems with this: 1-you need to know where the cancer is (so why not remove it?) so it can't be used on spreading multi organ cancers 2-you need to stick a needle into it (this isn't safe for some parts of the body) 3-it won't always get all the cancer, just the parts you can reach so this will probably leave cancerous cells in the body afterwards that will settle into some other organ to grow.
If you've got an inoperable tumour - and this technique leaves one cancer cell behind - you're onto a fucking winner.
Thing the first: In TFA, they tested this with brain cancer tumors transplanted onto mice, and the result was a 100% cure. Full remission.
Second thing: If this takes billions of cancer cells and reduces that number to a few hundred, then it's a treatment and not a cure. But still would be massively useful.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.