17-Year-Old Girl Creates Nanoparticle That Kills Cancer, Wins $100,000

When I was seventeen, it was a very good year. Actually, that’s a flat out lie. When I was seventeen I was probably wallowing in self-important despair so trivial that now, years later, I can’t even remember if I was wallowing or not. The point I’m getting at here is that I wasn’t doing anything productive, much less anything that could save countless lives and contribute to a field of science that is more important now than it has ever been. That’s what Angela Zhang was doing, and now, she’s $100,000 the richer for it. Also, she can say she’s created a nanoparticle, one that kills cancer, for what that’s worth (Spoiler: It’s worth a lot).

The $100,000 Zhang earned comes with first prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project, “Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells,” was apparently as complex, thorough, and revolutionary as it sounds.

The nanoparticle Zhang created is already being referred to as something of a “swiss army knife” in the area of cancer treatment. That’s not to say it’s dull and rusty because I you didn’t take care of it when I was you were out camping, but rather that it has a whole bunch of useful applications. The nanoparticle is delivered to tumors via the drug salinomycin where it kills cancer cells and deposits gold and iron-oxide materials to help with MRI imaging.

Not only is this impressive in its own right, but let me remind you this girl is 17. She’s got a lot of time ahead of her. She spent about 1,000 hours developing this particle since 2009 (when she must have been 15) and she wants to continue to study chemical engineering, biomedial engineering, or physics. She hopes to someday be a research professor. Thank god, because if she said she wanted to be a poet, we might have a problem on our hands.

Read more at link above

Research Updates
http://www.kanziuscancerresearch.org/research/research_updates/
Biomedical Engineers from UC Davis use Kanzius' Method to Kill Cancer Cells
This youngster has taken a different route for a more "traditional" means of treatment for a specific type of cell. The nanoparticle exists to supplement imaging needs and can be excited to cause a release of Salinomycin at the tumor site. "The mechanism of action by which Salinomycin kills cancer stem cells specifically remains unknown, but is thought to be due to its action as a potassium ionophore due to the detection of Nigericin in the same compound screen. Salinomycin has high toxicity and a narrow therapeutic window which may limit its clinical use." (Wikipedia) Building on John Kanzius’ vision, a team of biomedical engineers from University of California of Davis have developed a delivery system capable of performing the Kanzius Noninvasive Radiowave Cancer Treatment. This manuscript, A Radio-frequency Coupling Network for Heating of Citrate-coated Gold Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy: Design and Analysis, published in the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (one of the leading research journals in the field of biomedical engineering) demonstrates that cancer cells are killed when incubated with gold nanoparticles (GNPs) and exposed to certain levels of Radiofrequency electromagnetic (RF-EM) fields. DOWNLOAD at link above

New treatment is nearing trials, may be in practice within a few years

When it comes to cancer treatments like chemotherapy or radiation, harsh side effects ranging from mild, such as nausea, to severe, such as infertility or death often come with the territory.

Now a new therapy method is being tested which may replace these more caustic cures. The new treatment is known as Kanzius RF Therapy, named after Pennsylvania inventor John Kanzius, a retired radio and TV engineer. The method on a most basic level involves attaching nanoparticles to cancer cells and then blasting them with RF, effectively cooking the cancer cells.

In tests the new treatment has an amazing perfect record -- it killed 100 percent of cancerous cells, while leaving healthy cells untouched. It is being tested at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Dr. Steve Curley, the professor leading the testing in Houston states, "I don’t want to give people false hope, but this has the potential to treat a wide variety of cancers."

Chemotherapy and radiation's many harmful side effects are due to the fact that these methods kill healthy cells in addition to cancerous ones. The Kanzius RF Therapy not only does not kill healthy cells, but it is noninvasive. It uses either gold or carbon nanoparticles, which have a long history of medical use.

Gold nanoparticles have been a subject of much research since their invention in 1980. The particles can pass through cell membranes and move through the blood stream, allowing researchers to use them to target certain cellular structures. This behavior can also be useful for drug delivery. There are still some unresolved questions on the safety of nanoparticles, due to the relative lack of information on health effects of long-term exposure.

Curley's team at M.D. Anderson coats the gold nanoparticles with proteins that bind to receptors on cancerous cells only. This allows researchers to inject the nanoparticles into cancer cells, leaving normal cells untouched. Dr. Christopher Gannon, assistant professor at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, who collaborated with M.D. Anderson explains, "We’re looking into gold because it is FDA-approved and has a track record of being tolerated in humans."

Once the cancer cells have been loaded with nanoparticles, a radio frequency generator is activated to cook the cancer cells. Initial trials on animal and human cells showed that the cancer cells injected with the nanoparticles had a 100 percent kill rate, while no healthy cells were harmed. A study in the November 2007 issue of the journal Cancer showed that the cancerous cells died within approximately 48 hours.

A separate study in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology in January 2008 similarly confirmed the test results. Gannon states, "We know it has the potential to work well. It’s just a matter of making the details work."

The biggest challenge is in finding proteins that will bond to cancerous cells and not bond to healthy cells. Curley's team has found a molecule c225, which is FDA approved, and targets cancer cells. Unfortunately c225 can also bond to some healthy cells. Said Curley, "It will depend on the type of cancer and the targeting molecules attached to the nanoparticles."

The radio frequency generator used in the trials was invented by Kanzius after he went through chemotherapy for leukemia in 2003 and 2004. Kanzius declined to comment on his work, and has an exclusive media deal with CBS News, and will be appearing on a special edition of 60 Minutes this Sunday. Gannon lauds Kanzius as a pioneer, stating, "His device helped inspire us to create the targeted nanoparticles to make it a fully functional clinical device."

Kanzius is working to enlarge his prototype RF generator to a full-scale model the size of a CT-scanner, big enough to fit a human inside. This should eventually allow for clinical trials.

All those working on the project are very optimistic about its revolutionary nature. Curley, who describes himself as the "ultimate skeptic" states, "The best-case scenario is that we would be able to clinical trials within three years."


Nanoparticle Stops Cancer From Spreading

LiveScience.com
2008-07-13

California researchers say they have developed molecular "smart bombs" that stop pancreatic and kidney cancer from spreading in mice while causing fewer side effects and damage to healthy surrounding tissues than traditional chemotherapy.

A team from the University of California, San Diego, designed a "nanoparticle" anti-cancer drug delivery system that zooms in on a protein marker called integrin avB3, which is found on the surface of certain tumor blood vessels. The marker is tied to the development of new blood vessels and malignant tumor growth.

While the system had little impact on primary tumors, it halted the metastasis of pancreatic and kidney cancers throughout the bodies of mice. Cancer metastasis normally is much harder to treat than the primary tumor, and it usually leads to the patient's death.

The findings were published in this week's online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the report, the system works with a lower dose of chemotherapy because it attacks the cancer with such precision. In most chemo treatments, the destruction of healthy tissue is a side effect as it floods the body with cancer-killing toxins.

"We were able to establish the desired anti-cancer effect while delivering the drug at levels 15 times below what is needed when the drug is used systemically," study leader David Cheresh, vice chairman of pathology at UCSD, said in a university news release. "Even more interesting is that the metastatic lesions were more sensitive to this therapy than the primary tumor."

UCSD engineers and oncologists together designed the nanoparticle -- a microscopic particle made of lipid-based polymers -- to work with the cancer-killing drug doxorubicin.


Toxoplasmosis, a common food- and pet-borne illness linked to hallucinations, personality alteration, and, since it's often carried by house pets, the stereotype of the crazy cat lady, infects around 15 percent of the US population. Luckily, a new technique that traps the parasite with gold nanoparticles, and then zaps them with lasers, should help ease the $7.7 billion the disease costs America every year.

The treatment, developed at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, uses gold nanoparticles that attach to toxoplasmid-hunting antibodies. The gold carrying-antibodies then spread through the circulatory system, affixing themselves to parasites in the blood.
Once the gold particles are well distributed and widely attached to the parasite, the laser heats up the gold, incinerating the parasites. According to the researchers, the laser could be tuned to the so-called "tissue window", a wavelength of light to which the human body appears transparent. That way, the laser can pass harmlessly through the skin, burning up the parasites along the way.

The researchers don't want to just stop at toxoplasmosis, either. If this technique works on one parasite, than malaria, another blood-infecting parasite, should also be susceptible to the same laser annihilation.