New Technologies And Developing Research Improve Cancer Treatments

It used to be that if you had cancer and radiation was the primary means of treatment, the entire body was exposed to high doses. That meant that healthy tissue was exposed along with the cancerous tissues, causing significant side effects.

In the past few years, targeting cancerous tumors has gotten more sophisticated so that the radiation would hit only the tumor. That vastly reduces the amount of side effects to the point where the major side effect is tiredness.

Those targeted treatments, which often occur using machines with trade names like Cyberknife, would take 10-20 minutes per session.

Now, a new machine can cut the time to 75 seconds.

The RapidArc machine rotates 360 degrees around the patient, creating a 3-D model for delivery of the radiation to cancerous tissue only. The less time a patient spends on the table, the less likely it is that healthy tissue will be radiated.

"I don't know how people stay for 25 or 30 minutes," said the elderly patient, who requested anonymity.

He's had seven of 42 radiation sessions, each time being in and out in five minutes. Typical radiation treatments involve the same number of sessions.

St. Vincent's is the first in the city to use the device, whose maker, Varian Medical Systems, said about 10 other hospitals had expressed interest.

It sounds like you have to trade off time exposed per session for the number of sessions, but it's a major improvement over earlier treatments. The trick is to balance the amount of radiation and focus it on the tumors as much as possible without damaging nearby healthy tissue and to do it in the least amount of time.

Meanwhile, a Florida high school student may have found a possible way to cure colon cancer.

For his science project last fall, [Kyle] Jones tested the effects of conjugated linoleic acid, known as CLA, an amino acid found mostly in meat and dairy products, on human colon cancer at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando.

His results showed that up to 90 percent of the colon cancer cells were killed within three days, indicating that the chemical properties of CLA could possibly be used as an effective treatment for colon cancer.


“It surprised me mainly how devastating it was to the cancer cells,” he said.

Jones has not continued his research since the initial project was completed, but researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center are conducting more extensive studies on CLA as well as other potential cancer therapeutics. Jones said it would take several years before any sufficient results are obtained.

MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas is one of the premier cancer research institutions in the world, and it would be amazing if Kyle Jones had found the key to curing colon cancer, which kills 655,000 worldwide annually.