Posted on 08/20/2007 8:23:48 PM PDT by Paved Paradise
Inventor from Erie, P.A. teams up with leading cancer center. The work has been quietly been going on for the last three years in a no-frills laboratory in Erie, Pennsylvania. Inventor, John Kanzius, working with Jim and Charlie Rutkowski, have been perfecting a device that will kill cancer cells with a radio frequency.
This humble workspace could soon become the epicenter of one of the most stunning scientific breakthroughs in cancer treatment in years.
Using the Kanzius RF machine and special nanoparticles, it appears that cancer cells can be targeted and killed without harming the rest of the body.
This is a deeply personal mission for John Kanzius. He is struggling to beat leaukemia. And he knows firsthand how tough standard treatments like chemotherapy and radiation can be on the body.
Kanzius told Channel 3's Mike O'Mara that, "If this ends up working they way it looks, it really could be the holy grail of cancer research."
The entire city of Erie is buzzing about John's invention. Two weekends ago, thousands turned out for a motorcycle rally called "Roar On The Shore". All the money is going to help John's cancer research.
Ralph Pontillo is the head of the Erie Manufacturers Association. He is proud that his city can help the Kanzius project.
"It's amazing, said Ralph, "that in the very near future someone is going to stick a pin on a map and say this is where cancer was cured. And that pin is going to be Erie, Pennsylvania. That blows your mind and that is inconceivable."
Former Erie Mayor, Joyce Savocchio, said "there are nights that I think about it and I can't go to sleep. It just enfolds you that you are on the brink of history and something so enormous that you can't imagine it."
The excitement is not limited to Erie, Pennsylvania. In Houston, Texas at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, a team of scientists believe that John Kanzius has the key to something extraordinary.
MD Anderson is one of the most respected cancer centers in the world. 79 thousand cancer patients were treated at the huge campus in Houston last year.
Doctor Steven Curley is leading the research team at MD Anderson. Dr. Curley is the author of over 110 publications and 30 book chapters, many dealing with the treatment of patients with hepotocellular cancer, gallbladder cancer, bile duct cancer, or liver metastases.
Curley is brimming with cautious optimism.
"If we can come up with ways of delivering these particles to the cancer cells, but not to normal cells," Curley said, "this treatment will work. There's not a doubt in my mind. Any kind of cancer, anywhere in the body!"
Doctor Curley's team is ready to publish their first results using laboratory animals. So far, the targeted nanoparticles and the Kanzius RF machine have passed every test.
"There is a great deal of work that has to be done", said Curley. "However, I suspect once the manuscripts are published, there's going to be a real rush of excitement about this whole process. I've already warned John to get ready because the floodgates are about to open."
Kanzius wants to make sure his invention does not get sidelined by an unsympathetic corporation that might not want see an effective treatment on the market.
Said Kanzius, "venture capitalists, big pharmaceuticals that might want to buy this to tempt me and stop the research, not going to happen. There is no amount of money that can buy me off. You can not put a price on a human life."
When the revolutionary treatment is ready for human clinical trials, you can bet that Erie, Pennsylvania will go to the front of the line. And why not, since the inventor lives just a few miles away.
I especially love that he refuses to sell out to the pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists.
It'd be nice to see little Erie, PA be the place where cancer is killed.
It’s a nice story but I would prefer to hear some persuasive discussion — i.e. “The device shows promise BECAUSE when it was tested on this or that, this or that happened.”
My BS antenna is twitchin’, I can’t help it.
Smacks of the 100 mpg carb that the oil companies were always buying.
I’m just sayin’.
Good luck to him, none-the-less.
God bless this guy whether this works or not. I must admit when I first started reading my initial thought was, “this is just another scam”. His excitement is infectious and it seems he has his heart and mind in the right place and quite a few with sterling credentials that believe he may have something good.
We'll know soon... ping
bump
Oh, ye of little faith. I saw an interview with this man. He’s the real deal and the doctors at the cancer center in Houston are taking him seriously.
His research is coming out in one of the scientific or medical journals within the next week or so, if you’re interested.
Um, if you can come up with ways of delivering X to the cancer cells, but not to normal cells, then (more or less) the treatment X will work, if X = something bad for cells. Any kind of cancer, anywhere in the body.
Seems to me the trick is getting X only to the cancer cells. It's hard to get radiation only to cancer cells without also going through & hitting normal cells. Chemo, same thing. Here, it's not described well but it sounds like the idea is to engineer nanoparticles that "tag" only cancer cells so as to make them respond (resonate?) to certain RF frequency, which will kill those cells preferentially but not others.
Great, but how does one do that? How close are they to doing that? Is it even possible? How? Nothing in this article gives me any idea how close or far, how plausible or remote a possibility the "tagging" part is. And seems to me that's the main part!
Anyone could come up with a treatment that will work "if you can just get it to the cancer cells and not to the normal cells". If I could just get fire to cancer cells and not to normal cells, I'd have a cure for cancer! But that's hard.
After watching how the human body gets resistant to chemotherapy, radiation, and other anti-cancer agents, wouldn’t someone have to keep getting radio frequency and nanoparticle treatments forever and wouldn’t the body finally get resistant to this? Do we have even one case of cancer cured in animals with this method?
Crock
As I posted to another Freeper, this guy is the real deal. I think he’s on to something.
Regarding your last paragraph, that’s why I’m asking the praying Freepers on here to PRAY for this guy and the research. This is the best news I’ve heard in a while.
I keep up on this stuff since my mom got cancer and we’ll find out tomorrow if it’s spread to another area of the body.
Heck, most of my deceased relatives died from cancer at a fairly early age so I’m really interested in anything that might stop it.
I’m with you. If we could just get ALL treatments to locate, bind with and kill ONLY the cancer cells, we’d be in good shape.
Interesting stuff nonetheless.
So, once these nanoparticles are in the body, how if ever are they excreted? Where do they go, even if it’s AFTER they help kill the cancer cells?
http://www.nick2.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/saltwater-into-fire
How is he in two places.
You have NO idea what you are talking about.
There ARE venture capitalists out there who would definitely want this stuff squelched. There are companies developing some very high-tech therapies right now in the areas of cancer cell destruction. A couple of former colleagues of mine are involved in such ventures. Two years ago, one of them told me he’s working on something “way out there” and said he’d let me know when he has something concrete to give me. The suspense has been killing me because I know what he’s already done in this area.
If this inventor’s stuff proves out, the investors in these companies will lose everything and that’s money in the high millions.
If there really were no side effects, having to keep going in wouldn't matter :) People could go in every 3 months or whatever for a prophylactic nano/RF treatment just to clean themselves out. Like getting a regular teeth-cleaning. Big deal. Much better than going to radiation/chemo... and having recurrences...
And too much cost? But if this really works, we're gonna stop spending countless billions on chemo and radiation equipment and supplies and research (and put some big corporations out of business, and medical workers out of work along the way)... so we'll have plenty.
As for resistance: the resistance sometimes seen to e.g. radiation treatments has specific biological causes, like hypoxia... and/or the radiation kills many of the cancer cells but not all, those left behind recover (and you can't keep going forever because after some threshold you'll cause complications in normal tissue, so some fraction of cancer is inevitably left behind)... But perhaps with this nano/RF treatment, there's no parallel to any of that. If the RF waves go through the whole body with equal strength, if the nanoparticles can "tag" any cancer cells no matter where they are (with an efficiency that's indifferent to biological variations such as hypoxia), if the fraction of cancer cells killed by an RF treatment is essentially 100%, etc., then maybe there'd be no equivalent of the resistance seen with radiation.
But yeah, there are some ifs involved. For one thing I still don't understand how you can possibly engineer (what I gather are) RF-sensitive nanoparticles capable of finding & attaching themselves to the category "any cancer cell". (1) that's a big category, cancer cells come in wide variety. (2) even in a specific *type* of cancer cell (which is probably what they envision doing - use nanos X to find the pancreatic cancers, use nanos Y to find the breast cancers, etc), it's hard to fathom being confident the nanoparticles will find each and every one of them, if you have to rely on the bloodstream, or diffusion, or something like that to spread those nanos. Some cancer cells would inevitably get lucky and successfully hide from the nano cancer-cell-dragnet, I'd think... (unless it doesn't matter as long as 99.9% are found?)
But maybe I've misunderstood. Either way, there's a lot of details swept under that rug I imagine.
Once he repeated this stupid conspiracist lunacy, he lost me.
Assuming they "tag" a cancer cell, (I gather) the cell would be essentially cooked to death by the RF, and then swept out of the body with other dead cells. So hopefully the nanos would still be attached somewhere to the former cell & excreted along with dead cells.
I'm basically just guessing here though.
I will pray for both this guy and for your mom. May she get good news.
I've been a patient there for 3 years for Sarcoma in the thigh. This is one of the two finest cancer research facilities in the world--along with Sloan-Kettering in NYC. And by far the most patient-oriented, uplifting hospital I've ever seen.
The principles of radiation therapy and chemo are balanced approaches that find the weakness of cancer cells (their need to constantly grow and multiply) and hurts those cells worse than the normal cells around them. It is true that all cells suffer in this, but the normal cells can survive while high numbers of cancer cells die.
The concept of putting nanoparticles that are attracted to the higher blood flow and faster cell division in cancer cells does not sound all that far-fetched. If a radio-pulse then explodes these nano-particles in the focused path to the tumor, then the peripheral damage could be quite small.
Let's all pray that this treatment gets approval quickly if it works. To have such a major research player as MD Anderson behind you is a powerful indicator that this stuff is for real.
In the long run, you cannot suppress innovation. If this man did indeed have a complete cure for all types of cancer, it’s value would exceed the value of all current remedies. Even if he was in it only for the money, no company producing today’s cancer drugs would have even close to the amount of money needed to buy him off. VC’s would be counting their previous cancer cure investments as sunk costs and pursuing the development of his ideas. The second to last paragraph raised my suspicions also.
I hope you will find tomorrow that the cancer has not spread.
I lost my father to cancer this year. He would still be with us if his surgery had gone well. We've lost many family members to cancer, too. But it is beatable with the right doctors. My father had the wrong doctors.
I know nothing of this man and his invention. But, in desperation, we searched and came across so many promising treatments that we realized later were scams. But there was one treatment that I believe might've helped - intravenous Vitamin C. Local doctors as well as a medical center associated with a well-respected university hospital is now trying IVC, so it is sounding more and more credibile as a treatment. Not much money to be made from Vit C, though, which explains the lack of interest in it.
You’re a doll. Thanks so much.
BTW, it would be just like God to have the person coming up with the cure to be just some regular “joe doe” from a little town and in PA yet. Gotta joke a little bit since they’re our great neighbor next door.
Thanks again!
Thanks. I hold out great hope always. I am sorry about your loss.
You may be an MD so this info could be old hat for you, but for others....here’s is a reference to the practice of radiopharmacology. The practice of “tagging” has been around a long time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiopharmacology
Big pharmaceuticals wouldn’t want to stop the research, just control how fast and in what directions it goes.
I think there's a middle ground here.
You have a point, I can see VC's or Big Pharm (or Big Radiation or Big Chemo or whoever) wanting to buy it out if it's promising research. But not to "squelch" it, to profit from it!
Once they bought it, why wouldn't they go ahead and develop it (if it really works)? they'd be the only firm doing it instead of just one among N firms doing radiation equipment (or whatever).
Or if it doesn't really have a chance of working, why would they fear it in the first place? let it lie in the dustbin of history along with cold fusion.
That's what smells sort of paranoid about the concern. It's like saying that companies both want profits and don't want them: they want profits so much they'd buy him out to squelch his super-advanced super-promising technique so they could keep profiting less off their outdated technique.
Huh??!
I don’t think that’s lunacy. Lots of money in cancer. Find a cure and a LOT of people are going to be out a LOT of MONEY, especially drug companies.
Sounds like it could happen very soon.
Praying that this works as I pray for ladyinred.
Thanks, Paved Paradise.
You actually sound like you know more about the proposed technique than the article describes... are you looking at a better article? If so, pass along the link, I'd like to read it :)
I'm concerned about the "higher blood flow" statement you cite as being the mechanism for the nanos to tag cancer cells... as I recall there are some cancerous situations in which the cancer cells actually get *less* blood flow, as the capillaries become constricted. Does this mean the nanos would sort of miss those cancer cells or not reach them as effectively? and thus the RF treatment would fail on such formations?
This kind of detail is why I need a better article to read :)
But I'm just not familiar with the notion that you can make a thing that could "tag" the category "all cancer cells". :-)
That's probably not really what is contemplated or proposed, of course. It's just that the article is written for a pop audience and doesn't go into detail there... a detail that's very interesting...
==> “If we can come up with ways of delivering these particles to the cancer cells, but not to normal cells,” Curley said, “this treatment will work. There’s not a doubt in my mind. Any kind of cancer, anywhere in the body!” <==
And if I had some bread, we would have everything necessary for a baloney sandwich.
Attaching a marker to cancer cells - ONLY cancer cells - is the holy grail of cancer research. The real researchers are trying to find external surface molecules unique to cancer cells and create antibodies that will attach to them, thus marking them for destruction and removal by existing natural processes in the body.
But cancer cells are defective in their reproductive machinery, so their character changes rapidly through generations, and the markers change as well. NOTHING in this article describes how these particles will associate with a majority of cancer cells while avoiding all normal cells in the body. This article is an act of cruelty.
You might be able to use it on chloresterol as well.
You might be able to use it on chloresterol as well.
Unless the lesions are in some place like the heart valves or the brain. I wonder if anyone is pursuing using a meson gun on cancer cells?
Stuttering Trigger-Finger.
No I wasn’t doubting him, but it seems a bit strange that the writer didn’t take the opportunity to explain WHY everyone thinks this procedure holds so much promise.
October 17, 2005
Gold Nanoparticles Show Potential
for Noninvasive Cancer Treatment
A father-and-son team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that targeted gold nanoparticles combined with a subsequent laser ablation can kill oral cancer cells. Building on their previous work that used gold nanoparticles to detect cancer, the investigators now are heating the particles and using them as agents to destroy malignant cells. Their study findings are reported in the journal Cancer Letters.
“In an earlier study we showed how gold nanoparticles could be bound to malignant cells, making cancer detection easier. Now we have examined how the particles’ ability to absorb light helps kill those cancer cells,” said principal author Ivan El-Sayed, M.D., of the UCSF Medical Center.<<
http://nano.cancer.gov/news_center/nanotech_news_2005-10-17b.asp
This is more detailed info on how other researchers bound gold nanoparticles to cancer cells. This research was published in 2005. Don’t know if they use the same technique, but it is sophisticated.
DK
If this is what it looks like, everyone in the world should be praying hard for this guy.
thanks, bfl
Do you have any examples of that ever happening. As far as I can tell, the idea that corporations are able to squelch breakthrough innovations is a fantasy of the left. Maybe that is because ever since Prometheus, the gods have had a very hard time containing human ingenuity.
You got it.
My son was recently diagnosed with an aggressive type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, if this guy is on to something real he can't get it on the market fast enough to suit me.
I have to say though, a lot of people over the last 50 years have claimed that they had a cure for cancer but it turned that out they didn't. Cautious but hopeful here.
If he’s the real deal he shouldn’t be propagating paranoid lunacy about “big pharma” trying to buy him out to “prevent an effective treatment.”
From MD Anderson’s website on Dr. Curley...
http://utm-ext01a.mdacc.tmc.edu/dept/pub/resrepv2.nsf/183e659df33a35188625662c0017b401/eee9091a3fd610ef862570c0005e0f01?OpenDocument
Seven years ago, we began preclinical studies utilizing radiofrequency ablation for thermal destruction of hepatic malignancies. The preclinical studies led to clinical trials that began 5 years ago. Our group has now performed radiofrequency ablation in more than 450 patients with primary or metastatic hepatic malignancies, and we have defined the indications, limitations, and complications associated with this treatment. The results of our phase I and II clinical trials utilizing radiofrequency ablation led to successful United States Food and Drug Administration approval of radiofrequency ablation as a treatment in patients with hepatic malignancies.
That is the theory that a certain RF can "crack" water and make hydrogen. It's one of those self sustaining, violation of the second law of thermal dynamics free energy forever and ever things that never leads anywhere stories. File it with the 100 MPG carberator stories.
No, I don't know how the nanoparticles tag and kill cancer cells, but I've heard of other processes that tried to concentrate some material in cancer cells which could be then be "microwaved" to overheat the tumor cells.
When I go to MD Anderson they use ultrasound, with digital enhancement of red & blue blood flow to see if any lesions have unusually high blood flow.
My point was that cancer cells have several differentiating features about themselves. And the inventor of this process, who has Leukemia (something that I had 10 years ago also) may not be inventing the magic bullet for his form of cancer, but he's doing incredible work for millions of sufferers and their families.
Most cancers have to steal extra bloodflow to support themselves and grow. When I had radiation a few years ago, it basically killed most of the capillaries around the tumor site and eliminated new cell growth for 2-3 years. It was a bummer for me. Radiation also caused a burn the size of a silver dollar that wouldn't heal and eventually required a major skin graph.
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