“There’s an exciting new cancer treatment on the horizon called Flash radiotherapy that could shake up the field as we know it. Rather than delivering radiation over several minutes like current techniques, Flash supercharges traditional radiotherapy by blasting tumors with an extremely intense dose of radiation in under a second,” reports TechSpot:
While it may not sound like a major leap, this approach offers one big advantage: killing cancerous cells while doing less damage to surrounding healthy tissue. This is believed to occur because healthy tissues can better withstand the rapid dose than cancer cells.
Early experiments on healthy lab mice are promising and have already proven that the rodents don’t develop the typical side effects, even after two rounds of radiation.
The work behind Flash radiotherapy is being bolstered by an unlikely source: CERN, the particle physics lab famous for the Large Hadron Collider. While the concept of Flash originated from radiobiologists over a decade ago, CERN is adapting its particle accelerators – originally designed for smashing atoms – to deliver radiation at ultra-high speeds for cancer treatment….
If successful, Flash may allow higher cure rates for notoriously deadly cancers like glioblastoma brain tumors. Flash could also allow higher radiation doses to tackle tough-to-treat cancers that have spread to other organs. With conventional radiotherapy, doctors often can’t go as far as they’d like over fears of collateral damage….Human trials of Flash are already underway at various hospitals around the world. For instance, the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, US, is planning an early-stage trial involving children with metastatic cancer that has spread to their chest bones.
In other news, lab-grown stem cells could be a ‘breakthrough’ for fighting cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.
There are personalized cancer vaccines that cut death rates for skin and breast cancer by 40-50%. Even if these medical advances save countless lives, government regulations may delay them from being used for years. The FDA can take years to approve vaccines, medical tests, and drugs. The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee, the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people likely got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. At least a hundred thousand people died waiting years for the FDA to approve beta blockers.
Earlier, a blood test was developed that detects many brain cancers that doctors previously couldn’t detect until it is too late to save most victims. The Guardian reported in January that “Surgeons and scientists have developed a world-first blood test for brain cancer that experts say could revolutionize diagnosis, speed up treatment and boost survival rates.” Despite advances in fighting other kinds of cancer, “brain tumors have remained notoriously difficult to diagnose.”
Scientists have created tiny robots to repair damaged cells, and nanorobots to destroy cancerous tumors.
