HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TND) — From chemotherapy and radiation to stem cell transplants and immunotherapy, treatments for cancer across the board have made advancements over the years thanks to billions of dollars poured into cancer research.
Yet, every sixth death in the world is due to cancer.
Doctors and surgeons try to heat body tissue, freeze body tissue, bind antibiotics with DNA, use high-powered energy beams and plenty more methods to kill cancer cells.
But a group of scientists at Rice University tried to take a jackhammer of sorts to cancer cells.
The results could change the future of not just cancer treatment, but medicine as we know it.
“It’s something that cells have never before seen, ever in the history of the world, as far as we know,” said Dr. James Tour, a chemistry professor at Rice University.
Using Tour’s lab, Rice University scientists and collaborators discovered atoms of a small dye molecule that’s currently used for medical imaging can vibrate in unison when stimulated by near-infrared light. This causes the cell membrane of cancerous cells to rupture.
According to their study published in Nature Chemistry, the vibration method killed 99% of human melanoma cells in lab cultures. Half of mice with melanoma tumors became cancer-free after the treatment.
Ciceron Ayala-Orozco, the lead author of the study and a research scientist at Rice, said they refer to the animocyanine molecules as “molecular jackhammers.” Like a real-life jackhammer used in construction to break concrete, when stimulated by light, these molecules vibrate a trillion times per second, and “it’s so fast that anything that is around the molecule will be destroyed.”
“The speed of this type of therapy can completely kill the cancer much faster than, say, photodynamic therapy,” Ayala-Orozco said. “The mechanical action through the molecular jackhammer is immediate, within a few minutes.”
These killer molecules can also be activated with near-infrared light rather than visible light. Near-infrared light can penetrate much deeper into the body and access organs or bones without damaging tissue or surgery.
Tour said this is crucial when it comes to how a possible cancer treatment using this method would impact the patient’s body. The molecules are non-lethal unless this specific light is shined on them, and once it is, the jackhammers act like nano-scalpels.
“A lot of times with chemotherapy, it’s those off-target sites where you start killing cells that cause a lot of sickness,” Tour said. “In this, only where you shine the light will the cells die In that sense, it’s much more selective than the typical methods.”
Many types of chemotherapy can only be used once, because the cells figure out a way to keep the molecules from attacking them. Not so with the jackhammers.
“The whole difference about this is because it’s a mechanical action, it’s not relying on some chemical effect,” Tour said. “It’s highly unlikely that the cell will be able to battle against this. Once it’s cell-associated, the cell is toast once it gets hit by light Only if a cell could prevent a scalpel from being able to cut it in half, could it prevent this.”
So far, these jackhammers have killed every cancer cell type the scientists have tried. And not only that, but Tour believes they can kill far more than just cancer cells.
“It will kill all sorts of cell types,” he said. “With our other mechanical action molecules, we’ve demonstrated that they kill bacteria; we’ve demonstrated that they kill fungi. If a person has lost the ability to move a limb, if you can stimulate the muscle with light, that would be quite advantageous.
“Cancer is just the beginning.”
Like any new scientific discovery, molecular jackhammers will have to clear several hurdles before they can be used to treat cancer in patients. Researchers will have to prove a large therapeutic index, meaning the inherent toxicity of the jackhammers is low.
Then, instruments with a light specifically tuned will have to be manufactured, and cancer centers will have to get the light sources. Doctors will have to learn how to administer the treatment properly, including how to insert a light into the body if the cells are deep inside the body.
Tour added the treatment will be challenging for a patient with cancer that’s become systemic.
“If it’s throughout the entire body, this is going to be a harder technology to implement. You’d have to essentially get into a tanning bed, in a sense.”
Not to mention, the treatment’s movement through the agency approval process would take years. Permits must be obtained to keep testing toxicity in animals and then humans, which is expensive. Small companies can’t do it alone; they need large companies to partner or buy out the project.
However, the scientists at Rice may have a slight advantage – these molecules are already FDA-approved for imaging. Ayala-Orozco and his team essentially connected dots that already existed – using molecules that currently detect cancer cells to kill cancer cells.
“The main framework of it has been approved before for other uses, in particular as dyes, so that would streamline a lot with the FDA,” Tour said. “They would say, ‘OK, at least we know the core of this is not going to be detrimental to the human body, because they’ve used it a lot before.’”
So, while in early stages, the idea of killing cancer cells with a molecular jackhammer is promising, and not just for the nearly ten million people who die of cancer worldwide each year.
“It’s really a tremendous advance. What this is going to do is open up a whole new mode of treatment for medicine,” Tour said. “It’s just like when radiation came in, when immunotherapy came in. This is a whole new modality. And when a new modality comes in, I mean, it’s just, so much begins to open up.
“Hopefully, this is going to change medicine in a big way.”
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