Nanotubes and treating breast cancer.

Tweet

Many years ago I pondered how one day I would cure cancer! The idea I came up with, was I thought, pretty smart. I'd learned somewhere that everything has a natural resonance, and my idea was to introduce a metal into a cancer cell (I thought of using some altered variety of the common cold virus) and then to apply the correct sound from outside the body that would resonate that particular metal. The result would be, to my mind at least, that the individual cells would turn to mush and hey presto, cancer cured.

Like all good, simple ideas, it didn't progress any further, probably because

1. I didn't have the odd $10Million to set up a team and equipment to work on my theory, and
2. I was a humble GP with five very hungry children to feed and
3. It wouldn't have worked anyway

But I was reminded of my idea when I read about how researchers are using muti-walled nanotubes for the treatment of breast cancer. Apparently there are breast cancer stem cells that are particularly resistant to treatment and are thought to be responsible for the spread/metastasis of breast cancer and unfortunatley the usual readiation therapy doesn't work on them.

But the nanotubes, although made of carbon, when exposed to certain laser radiation, heat up and kill the cells they are in. At this stage it appears that the nanotubes are injected directly into cancer tumours, the hope is that they can be "delivered" to individual metastases and then activated. That dream is still a long way off, but then 20 years ago I thought 10 years seemed a long time too.

reference
image