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?
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'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.