For decades, scientists have known about the potential of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) as a treatment for cancer. The only problem was that there wasn’t a delivery agent that would target the tumor without causing damage to the surrounding tissue. Now the folks over at the University of Missouri (MU) appear to have solved that problem.

In BNCT, a tumor is injected with non-radioactive boron-10 isotope capture agent which can capture epithermal neutrons to result in fission of the boron-11 nuclei into alpha particles and lithium ions that kill the tumor. Tumor-selective boron delivery agents were not available, until now it seems. Professor M. Frederick Hawthorne from MU apparently has designed a boron chemical which captures neutron to release lithium and helium atoms that destroys cancer cells from the inside without causing any harm to healthy cells.

According to Hawthorne, “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”.

That’s certainly good news for people suffering from the deadly disease. You can check out more details about the study by Hawthorne and his team here.

[Source]

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Researchers have recently narrowed down a molecule that will force the initiation of the body’s already present tumor destroying abilities, causing cancerous cells to die but not affecting healthy tissue in trials on mice.

The molecule, named TIC10 forces the gene for the tumour necrosis factor related apoptosis inducing ligand, or TRAIL for short, to jump into action attacking cancerous tumors, preventing patients from having to go through debilitating therapies.

Wafik El-Deiry, an oncologist at the Pennsylvania State University in Hershey and lead on the study stated, “TRAIL is a part of our immune system: all of us with functional immune systems use this molecule to keep tumors from forming or spreading, so boosting this will not be as toxic as chemotherapy”

TIC10’s effectiveness is due to the fact that it is much smaller than other proteins that have been previously tested as TRAIL initiators.  It’s small size means it can pass through the body’s blood/brain barrier, a natural defense against microbes penetrating into and infecting the brain.  But until now, it also stopped TRAIL initiators from having any effect on brain tumors.  “We didn’t actually anticipate that this molecule would be able to treat brain tumors – that was a pleasant surprise.” Said El-Deiry.

Not only does TIC10 initiate TRAIL genes in cancerous cells, but also healthy ones.  This makes it possible to create a ‘bystander effect’ in which healthy cells immediately will bind to adjacent cancerous cells, assisting in their demise.

Trials have shown that TIC10 has great effects against many different types of tumors, including, colon and lung cancer, lymphoma and breast cancer.  It showed extreme effectiveness against glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor that traditionally is very difficult to treat.  Mice with glioblastomas, treated with TIC10 and Bevacizumab (a drug commonly used to treat brain tumors) survived three times as long as untreated mice and 6% longer than those treated with just Bevacizumab.

TRAIL type therapies were initially found in the mid 1990’s, but lack luster results when coupled with the current treatments of the day caused many large pharmaceutical companies to abandon the method.  While these current methods have only been attempted on mice, the researchers are very optimistic the new methods will be successful in humans as well.

Could this be the end to the devastating effects of cancer as we know them?  The implications of this new research are very exciting and the potential is huge.

[ source ]

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You know those scanners implemented by the TSA that can see through your clothing? They utilize terahertz (THz) radiation and it turns out that this could literally “unzip” the DNA molecule. And now they’re thinking of implementing the technology in mobile devices.

Fitting somewhere between microwaves and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum, the terahertz wave is able to penetrate through porous material like clothing and wood, allowing the TSA security personnel to see if you’re hiding something in your underwear. It could also be used by medical professionals to find small tumors without invasive surgery or, in a more novel sense, for consumers to get “X-ray vision” like Superman.

But all is not well. Dr. Boian Alexandrov is a researcher at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory and he has found that terahertz waves destroy human DNA, unzipping the helix strand. This could cause sickness, cancer or even death. To make matters worse, Dr. Kenneth O, director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and a professor of electrical engineering, University of Texas at Dallas have developed a CMOS chip for mobile phones that broadcast THz waves, giving cell phones radiation imaging capabilities. It sounds cool, but could be dangerous.

“CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips,” Dr. O said. “The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and a transmitter on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects.”  Due to privacy concerns, Dr. O and his team are focused on uses in the distance range of less than four inches.

Clearly, more research is warranted.

The post X-Ray Vision, Body Scanning DNA-Destroying Terahertz Chips Coming to Mobile Phones? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The diagnosis of most particular types of disease is a time-consuming process. But that’s going to change in the future thanks to a new breathalyzer-like technology that is currently under development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The researchers there believe that the tech could be used to diagnose a wide range of diseases including cancer and diabetes.

The human body reacts differently to different conditions. It is capable of shifting between energy sources when required.

According to Warren Porter, a UW-Madison professor of zoology, “When we’re healthy we use the food that we eat. When we get sick, the immune system takes over the body and starts tearing apart proteins to make antibodies and use them as an energy source“.

This shift between energy sources leads to different biochemical pathways. As a result, there will be changes in the carbon isotopes in the exhaled CO2. The “breathalyzer” will be used to detect these changes in isotopic signatures of carbon-containing metabolic by-products.

One of the main advantages of such a system will be the early detection of diseases. Diseases could be diagnosed well before symptoms start to show up. As you already know, early detection is very important when it comes to diseases such as cancer. And the use of a single technique to survey the entire body will also simplify diagnosis to a great extent.

The research on the technique was done on mice which were injected with glucose containing a single atom of carbon-13. This was done to detect the most active metabolic pathways in sick and healthy mice. They found out that there were changes in the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in the exhaled CO2 by the healthy and sick mice. Furthermore, different ratios were detected for different diseases.

At the moment, the “breathalyzer” is about the size of a shoebox, but they are planning to make it smaller. Head here to know more about the study.

[ source ]

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A team of researchers led by Professor Mark Grinstaff have a developed a unique material and drug delivery mechanism that could allow implants that release at a designated rate for months.

Such a system could revolutionize the way we treat patients with chronic pain or even as a system to prevent cancer tumor recurrence after a surgical resection.

Grinstaff and members of his team recently reported information regarding their novel drug system to the Journal of American Chemical Society on the 16th of January.

So what exactly is the system made up of? It contains a biocompatible, highly porous, 3D polymer material that contains your medical doctor’s drug of choice and a volume of air that slows infiltration from surrounding water. As the water seeps into the material, it pushes out and therefore slowly releases the drug.

The idea was to create a 3D material that has polymer fibers throughout and air trapped within. If we can slow the penetration of water into the structure, it will slow the release of the drug.

If the system can be perfected, it could prove to be a major breakthrough for the medical and scientific community, and the drug companies too. The implications of such a delivery system are very clear and this could prove a major game changer for the fight against cancer, not to mention for the aid of those with serious pain issues like terminal cancer.

Loaded with a widely used anti-cancer drug called SN-38 in in vitro experiments, the polymer mesh and internal air pocket proved to be robust and effective against lung cancer cells in solution for more than 60 days, indicating its suitability for long-term drug delivery.  (A similar material without air releases its drug within a week.) Grinstaff and his collaborators next plan to conduct a series of in vivo experiments to evaluate the system’s efficiency and potential clinical effectiveness—a critical preliminary step before initiating clinical trials.

[ source ]

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NASA is mostly interested in exploring things beyond this planet, but many of its innovations have found their way into our everyday lives. The latest development is a special chip that houses 32 nanosensor bars, reacting to a myriad of stimuli from the environment. It could diagnose cancer and measure blood sugar levels in diabetics with nothing more than a breath.

The implementation being demonstrated by Jing Li of NASA Ames has it as a cell phone case, looking very much like it would latch onto an iPhone. It could just as easily be adapted for other devices, of course. In a nutshell, there are 32 nanosensor bars on a chip about the size of a postage stamp. Each of these bars is composed of different nanostructure material, reacting to different chemicals in different ways and providing real-time monitoring.

Going back to the previous examples, there is a correlation between lung cancer and nitrous oxide. If the nanosensor bars detect elevated levels of nitrous oxide in a person’s breath, they could detect the cancer way ahead of time. Similarly, the level of acetone in a diabetic’s breath is correlated with their blood sugar level. No more need for those nasty finger pricks?

Naturally, NASA is exploring all sorts of other options too, including military applications. It was used on the International Space Station to monitor air quality and check for formaldehyde. The DoD is funding an application where soldiers could be outfitted with real-time detection of chemical threats. From a big brother perspective, the Department of Homeland Security could take a “big picture” look from the cell phones of citizens to assess the chemical threats in an area following some sort of disastrous event. The possibilities are endless.

And it looks close to production ready too. Who said science couldn’t be fun?

The post NASA’s Revolutionary Cancer Nanosensing Cell Phone Case appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

But in all seriousness, the WHO has increased the threat level, similar to the George W. days with the terrorist threat levels, Cell phone radiation just got an upgrade to the third highest rating.  The six page report states the following: “A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agentand cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working Group to be credible, but chance, bias orconfounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence.”  They continue by saying it is “possibly carcinogenic.”  That possibility being that if you use a cell phone, it is possible that you will get a brain tumor.  Just as if you put your head in a microwave, you will probably cook your brain a little bit faster. On the other hand, if you’re a candidate for the RL1, you’ve made it quite a long way, survived through some seriously crazy shit, i’m sure a little cell phone radiation can’t compare to those DDT blasts they used to spray people with back in the day.

Although the threat is not imminent, of course more research is necessary regardless of the findings from a 31 scientist panel spread across 14 countries.

The post FACT: Brain Cancer Risk Increases With Cell Phone Use appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Photo: Pong Research

After one of the most expensive and extensive studies of its kind ever conducted, we are left in much the same situation as when we started. We wanted to know if the radiation emitted from cell phones can have damaging health effects. What did we learn from Interphone?  Well, it seems that “no clear conclusions” were drawn from the Interphone study. Christopher Wild is the director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which coordinated the study, and he said that “an increased risk of brain cancer” was not established.

That’s to say that the study revealed nothing, though. They did say that there are “suggestions of an increased risk [at] the highest exposure levels.” In this way, they haven’t found the fire, but they found some “smoke” worth investigating.  However, other people are saying that the “data were dirty,” citing the way that the data was collected. There is going to be bias — recall bias, selection bias, participation bias — and this can skew the results.  For my part, these cell phone studies are starting to sound a little like the studies that try to link cancer to smoking. It’s hard to prove a causal relationship; you can only imply a correlational one.

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These days almost everyone has a mobile phone or some other type of wireless device. A study by MRI shows that twenty percent of American children ages 6-11 currently own a cell phone, up from 11.9% in 2005. The most shocking increase has been among 10-11 year olds (+80.5%).

The study was done on a group of 5000 participants, and talked about the feature-rich, kid friendly phones like Disney Mobile’s LG Phone and the FlyPhone. Some more information is discussed on how boys and girls use their phones differently. While girls make more calls and send text messages, boys are more interested in instant messaging, downloads, games, music and videos.

It’s interesting that the MRI study did not mention any health concerns, it was more focused on what the different child groups were interested in for what seemed to be a market summary for businesses. We are talking about a large population of developing children being subject to electromagnetic fields and radio frequency radiation, but I guess big business tends to avoid these issues.

A study released just last January showed mobile phone use before the age of 20 will increase chances of malignant brain tumors by five times. The international group of scientists studied these effects at two university hospitals in Sweden, they concluded that current standards for exposure to microwaves during mobile phone use is not safe for long-term exposure and needs to be revised.

It is also known (PDF: Summary Findings ) that calls lasting a mere two minutes can open the blood-brain barrier in children, as well as adults. This allows toxins in the bloodstream to cross the blood vessel gateway into the skull and attack brain cells. The same two-minutes of cell phone exposure can also disrupt the natural electrical activity of a child’s brain for up to an hour after. Now get to school kids and try to learn.

Chart provided by Silicon Alley Insider.

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