Thermotherapy With heat for cancer

Thermotherapy: with heat for cancer

(29.08.2010) In Berlin researchers of the nantechnology company have „MagForce“ developed a method that will expand cancer therapy by one treatment method in the future: "Thermotherapy with nanoparticles". there „The finest iron oxide dust is injected into malignant tumors and heated in an alternating magnetic field. The tumor cells are cooked properly: they burst or become severely weakened, "explains Managing Director Dr. Andreas Jordan.

The researchers have designed a patented nanochemical shell that allows only the diseased cells to absorb the iron oxide dust because they consider it to be nutrients. The healthy cells do not take up nanoparticles. If the iron particles are injected into the cells of the ulcers, they can not leave or wander in the body, because they were covered with a shell of aminosilanes, which causes the particles to clump when heated in the tumor. In the future, tumors can be treated from the inside out, and in cancer therapy, a new treatment alternative can be offered in addition to surgical interventions, radiation therapies and chemotherapies.

How the heating is done, Andreas Jordan illustrates the visitors like a five-cent coin, which he holds with tweezers in the notch of a small brown box on his desk. On both sides of the box are magnetic coils which induce an alternating magnetic field with up to 100,000 times a second of alternating polarity. As soon as the coils are switched on, the coin starts to glow. Similarly, the treatment of cancerous ulcers, explains Jordan.

For decades, the researchers have been working to develop their method and since the successful completion of a study at the Department of Neurosurgery of the Bundeswehr Hospital Berlin in patients with recurrent brain tumor (glioblastoma recurrence), since the end of June, the thermotherapy is now officially approved for treatment. The study included treatment of patients who had not benefited from surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, and who in most cases were considered untreatable. On average, patients survived 13.4 months longer than those in the non-thermotherapy group. "If the tumor has not yet spread, the therapy is sometimes surprisingly good," emphasized the study director at the Neurosurgical Clinic, Professor Klaus Maier-Hauff. Thus, some of the patients classified as non-treatable still live today, two years after the start of the thermotherapy treatment.

However, this form of minimally invasive nanocreative therapy is not only promising in the treatment of brain tumors, but may e.g. B. also help with prostate cancer, explained Professor Peter Wust of the Department of Radiation at the Virchow Hospital of the Berlin Charité the study results. "This means that nanotherapy can be used primarily in patients for whom conventional therapy methods do not provide satisfactory results," Wust continued. The use of the method for the treatment of esophageal, breast, liver and cervix cancer should also be examined. According to the experts, it is particularly gratifying that no serious side effects have occurred as a result of thermotherapy, which clearly distinguishes them from other cancer treatment methods. (Fp)