In a paper posted online by the journal Cancer, a team at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University reported that the technique destroyed liver cancer tumors in rabbits and caused no side effects.
Researchers now believe that the same technique, which uses Carbon nanotubes embedded in tumors and then heated externally by radiofrequency energy, can be used to cure and treat many other cancers.
Though the treatment damaged some healthy tissue adjacent to tumors, doctors see it as a potential non-invasive means to treat tumors anywhere in the body.
Dr. Steven Curley, an M.D. Anderson surgical oncologist and the paper's senior author, said, "These are promising, even exciting, preclinical results in this liver cancer model."
"Our next step is to look at ways to more precisely target the nanotubes so they attach to, and are taken up by, cancer cells while avoiding normal tissue," he added.
However, Curley estimated that it will still take at least three or four years away for the technique to be used in humans.
The rabbit study found the therapy worked only when the relatively ancient field of radio waves and nanotechnology were used together. The method works by creating a localized hyperthermia, or small fever that destroys the cancer cells' membranes, protein and even DNA. The cells then die and are carried out of the body through normal kidney functions.
"Given the unique electrical and chemical properties of [single-walled carbon nanotubes], we hypothesized that exposure to a focused external radiofrequency field would lead to significant heat release by the [nanotubes] allowing them to serve directly as an anticancer agent," researchers said.
In addition to liver and pancreatic cancer, the technique holds promise for treating lymphoma, melanoma and colon, breast and ovarian cancers, Curley said. It could also treat cancers after they have spread to other organs.
