From the first moment
my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from
the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer
seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did
little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known
reason, I started this blog…
Every month, I’ll be
highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from
different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into
understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/275661.php
Today I’m taking you WAY out there!
The article above has got all kinds of interesting
implications, but this is SO far out there that the EFFECT was only just
discovered. It didn’t happen in a cancer research lab. It didn’t happen because
of grants from the Susan B. Kommen Foundation.
This was a “physicist
working to create a luminescent nanoparticle to use in security-related
radiation detection”.
Huh?
Think about it this way – hospitals, power plants, dentist
offices, manufacturing plants, and a zillion other places use X-rays for
examining all kinds of objects and people. The technicians and doctors are
exposed to X-ray leakage. X-ray leakage can cause cell damage (Madame and
Pierre Curie knew all about this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie).
In most facilities working with X-rays, techs, et. al are
required to wear a badge called a dosimeter. It can be read using special
equipment and the level of exposure determined. What if they didn’t need the
special equipment? How would that work? This physicist would have created a
glowing dosimeter badge.
That is, if he and his team hadn’t gotten distracted by the
possibility that they’d discovered a way to target cancer cells with a
molecular complex that would release a deadly particle when activated by a dose
of targeted X-rays, killing the cancer cell.
That’s what happens in the lab. It’s a grand simplification
of a standard cancer treatment called “photodynamic therapy”. Which is...
Currently used to treat cancer – but mostly acne. I know,
prosaic, huh? Photodynamic therapy – PDT for short – involves the injection of
a minimally toxic substance into the body followed by exposure of that
substance to low doses of radiation. The radiation activates it so that it now
becomes lethal to the target cells or viruses. While it doesn’t have the “best”
reputation as a methodology for treatment of diseases, it has seen uses in the
treatment of bladder cancer, “psoriasis, skin cancers, HIV and MRSA, blood and
bone marrow decontamination, a wide variety of pathogens of the skin and of the
oral cavities can be exterminated, and finally, given the seriousness that drug
resistant pathogens have now become, there is increasing research into PDT as a
new antimicrobial therapy.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photodynamic_therapy)
Its uses are clear. “Chen's team tested the Cu-Cy on human
breast and prostate cancer cells in the lab and found it to be an effective
treatment when combined with X-ray exposure. In one test, for example, a tumor
treated with Cu-Cy injection and X-ray exposure stayed virtually the same size
over a 13-day period while a tumor without the full treatment grew by three
times.”
For those who have experienced the horror of hair loss as
well through exposure to the powerful anti-cancer drug treatments delineated
earlier in this blog, Dr. Chen and his team have some cautiously good news: “‘This
new idea is simpler and better than previous photodynamic therapy methods. You
don't need as many steps. This material alone can do the job,” Chen said. “It
is the most promising thing we have found in these cancer studies and we've
been looking at this for a long time.’”
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