Magnetic Nanoparticles Fry Tumors - ScienceNOW
5 Julho 2011
In a new study, a team from Korea found that injecting mice with tiny magnets and cranking up the heat eliminated tumors from the animals' bodies with no apparent side effects.The idea of killing cancer with heat isn't new. Like normal cells, cancer cells start to die when body temperature rises above 43˚C. The trick is figuring out how to kill the cancer without harming the body's own cells. One promising idea, known as magnetic hyperthermia, involves injecting minuscule "nanoparticles," basically microscopic lumps of iron oxide or other compounds, into tumors to make them magnetic. The patient is put into a magnetic field that reverses direction thousands of times every second. This therapy has not been tested in humans yet. The magnetic nanoparticles are excited by the applied field and begin to get hot, heating and potentially destroying the surrounding cancer tissue. Read more:
Magnetic Nanoparticles Fry Tumors - ScienceNOW