If your wellness is damaged by cancer, radiation therapy can really take its toll on your wellbeing. Side effects such as hair loss and nausea are common outcomes of radiotherapy, but now scientists have developed a new technique which can eliminate cancer without the debilitating side effects.
Developed by Professor M. Frederick Horne, who was recently awarded the prestigious National Medal of Science Award by President Obama, the new therapy has undergone trials in the US, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, in which the cancer cells of mice were killed successfully. Now the team of scientists from the University of Missouri is seeking funding in order to test the treatment on humans.
As it stands, radiotherapy damages some of your healthy cells, as well as destroying the cancerous ones, which is why you can commonly experience side effects such as hair loss, diarrhoea, nausea and sore skin. Hair follicles, for example, are usually destroyed during the radiotherapy process because they are made up of rapidly growing cells. This makes them akin to cancer tumours, as cancer cells grow faster than normal cells and, in the process, absorb more materials than normal cells, which starves them of oxygen. This factor that cancer cells and hair follicles share make it difficult for radiotherapy to differentiate between the two.
However, Professor Hawthorne’s team took advantage of the absorbent cells by forcing them to take in a specially engineered boron chemical. Boron, often found in soil, can play a strengthening role in the cell walls of all plants when absorbed in small amounts and so Professor Hawthorne designed a boron chemical which his team get the cancer cells to take in. Then, these boron-infused cancer cells were exposed to neutrons, a subatomic particle, so that the boron atom would shatter and tear apart the cancer cells, whilst sparing neighbouring healthy cells. This is what eliminated the side effects.
According to Professor Hawthorne, ‘Since the 1930s scientists have sought success with a cancer treatment known as boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). Our team finally found the way to make BNCT work by taking advantage of a cancer cell’s biology with nanochemistry. A wide variety of cancers can be attacked with our BNCT technique. The technique worked excellently in mice. We are ready to move on to trials in larger animals, then people. However, before we can start treating humans, we will need to build suitable equipment and facilities. When it is built, MU will have the first radiation therapy of this kind in the world.’