Nano particles used to kill leukemia cells - has anyone heard of this research

[Musicguy]

Very interesting and have not heard this research covered in any articles.

Here is the link to the article-

ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-re...

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero]

Interesting for acute leukemia patients, but has years to go...

No application in CLL mice yet...

Here is the study...

nature.com/bcj/journal/v3/n...

Virus Rhabdoviridae...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabd...

[musicgirl]

I haven't heard of it, but I did smile when I saw your user name - musicguy. I signed in as musicgirl - and am in Australia. Was diagnosed with CLL in 2002, at the age of 41. Watch and wait, with white cells at 65. My oncologist thought I would end up receiving treatment in 2014.

[shazie]

My friend whose father was battling with lymphoma brought that to my attention. You can find some info on University of Harvard site or watch some youtube videos about the doctor who is in charge of this project. His name is Dr. Farokhzad (I hope I am spelling it correctly).

Unfortunately, many of such a projects end up been used by military and not medical field. When I asked one of the oncologist at Stanford University about nanotechnology, he wasn't very optimistic about it (maybe in 10 years or more).

It is a shame.

[zevkalman]

As a physicist who has worked a bit on nanoparticles, one difficult thing about doing research with them is to make a lot of them, and to make them consistent in size and shape. Sometimes, like for carbon nanotubes, we actually have to buy them from special places but they always weren't that well-made because the process of making them is not perfect. To kill a cell by hyperthermia, it is estimated that one might need 5000 nanoparticles per cell! Basically the method I know most about is to kill cancer cells by introducing gold (or similar metal with high conductivity) nanoparticles into the cancerous cells (the nanoparticles are used with an uptake like glucose I think) and then using a laser to induce heating in the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles heat up because of electron excitation and relaxation. This can be done efficiently because metal has a high conductivity and you can tune the laser frequency to one of the resonant frequencies of the spherical gold nanoparticle (it can be hollow also, don't forget). The cancer cells are then killed by the heat (hyperthermia). One problem is that if the tumor is deep in the body, electromagnetic waves can't propagate that deep (more than a few centimeters in soft tissue). So there are still issues that need to be solved.

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero]

A fellow CLL patient...

Kanzius RF Therapy is an experimental cancer treatment that employs a combination of either gold or carbon nanoparticles and radio waves to heat and destroy cancer cells without damaging healthy cells.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_...

kanziuscancerresearch.org

Nice idea not sure how far it is going...