July 20, 2008
The Kanzius Machine: A Cancer Cure?
Inventor Tells 60 Minutes He Hopes To Live Long Enough To See Machine Cure Humans
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Play CBS Video Video The Kanzius Machine Lesley Stahl meets a man who invented a machine that may kill cancer cells using radio waves. (This segment was originally broadcast on April 13, 2008.)
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Video Cancer Machine Shows Promise John Kanzius, a cancer patient, invented a machine that uses radio waves to kill cancer cells. Harry Smith speaks with Kanzius and Dr. Steven Curley, who is testing the device.
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John Kanzius (CBS)
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Interactive Cancer Learn about the most common cancers, who gets them and how they are treated.
He showed Stahl an animation of how he hopes the targeting will work in people one day, with a simple injection of gold nanoparticles into the bloodstream.
"What we’re seeing here is an example of a gold nanoparticle in this case with an antibody on it, so the antibody would be the targeting molecule," Curley explained. "You can see it is tiny compared to a normal red blood cell just imagine all of these billions of these gold nanoparticles circulating through the body and then once they get into the blood vessels going to the tumor, these nanoparticles would go through and bind on the surface of the cell."
"The cancer cell. It wouldn't bind on a normal cell," Stahl observed.
"That's right, they would bind only to the cancer cell. Now here’s the nanoparticles in the cell, here comes John's radio frequency treatment. The cells get hot and they’re destroyed," Curley said.
"Gosh, it does look like one of those science fiction movies," Stahl remarked.
"Right now it is a little science fiction," Curley agreed. "We’re not quite to the real time yet, but it’s got a lot of promise."
Even if all goes well in the lab, it'll be at least another four years before human trials can start. But John Kanzius says he's afraid he doesn't have that much time. So to help speed up the research, he's been raising millions of dollars and getting press coverage about his invention.
"Now I can't count the number of times the journalistic community, has done stories on a cancer cure," Stahl said. "I did one in 1973. …How many times have we seen these things work in the Petri dish, work with animals. And then you get them into humans and they don’t work."
"Dozens," Curley replied.
But if this one does work, it most likely won't be developed in time to help the man who invented it. John Kanzius may have the option of a bone marrow transplant that could buy him more time, but after six years of chemo it would be another grueling ordeal.
"Did you ever say, 'I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not going to put myself through it,'?" Stahl asked.
"Yes. I said that-only about a year and a half ago," Kanzius replied. "I changed my mind because I think with all the research that’s going on with the institutions, that maybe, I'd like to be around for the first patient to get treated and just have a smile."
"Oh my God," Stahl said.
"And then I don't care anymore," Kanzius replied.
Produced by Tanya Simon
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 270 CommentsNanotechnology is an up and coming science. Delivering targeted medicine directly to cancer cells has always been one of the hallmark concepts being touted and the methods under discussion here are just one embodiment of applications for nanotechnology that are bandied about quite frequently. I am not at all surprised that such an application is appearing to work. I'm sure there are details to work through and clinical trials to run, but the basic science is fairly sound (and has been for a couple years now).
Nanotechnology will offer us a lot once we truly learn to embrace it. I once saw a group of middle school children that took the (fairly simple but very forward looking) concept of a respirocyte (I'll leave it to the reader to investigate exactly what a respirocyte *will be* once it is developed) and extended it to be a truly remarkable life saving device. With people like this coming of age, I believe there is hope for our society.
There is another cancer drug out there - DCA (dichloroacetate). They're funding clinical trials strictly through donations because it's a drug that can't be patented, drug companies can't make any money from it, and there's a good chance that it could potentially shut down many (not all) of the world's oncology centers. So, not only do big drug companies want to suppress this, doctors, nurses, and even hospital management are afraid of something like this working. Sure, there will always be some cancers that don't react well to DCA, but just think about the financial impact to the hospitals. It would be devastating, especially because I'm sure many of them are still paying on all the high priced machines used in their oncology dept!
There is this <a href="http://www.cancer-alternative.org/"> cancer alternative treatment</a>, where they apply <a href="http://www.cancer-alternative.org/gene-therapy-for-cancer/">Gene Therapy for Cancer</a>, together with other treatments like Radio Therapy, Traditional Chinese Medicine and others. My brother is going there soon.
Thanks
Also consider an entire program on cutting edge research on breast cancer. There are exciting new breast therapies being studied , some quite noninvasive. I am a registered nurse who has studied this and would like to share ideas w/a producer. Thank you . Barbara lee
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