Here you go: How nice he went to the same school as my husband. This man is a good man who will save many lives.
Nov 5, 2008 6:49 pm US/Eastern
Doctors Excited Over Man's Cancer-Fighting Machine
(KDKA) A man who grew up in Washington County has come up with a treatment idea that has the nation's top doctors excited.
He was featured on 60 Minutes and since then there has been even more promising news about his cancer fighting machine.
John Kanzius went to Trinity High School, lived in Carrick for a while and has a background in broadcasting. Now, he lives in Erie, where he has a lab, and that's where he show KDKA's David Highfield the machine that could revolutionize how cancer is treated.
It began for Kanzius six years ago after he was diagnosed with leukemia and was at a hospital in Texas.
"There were hundreds of kids taking chemotherapy, and their hair loss, I thought, 'God, I didn't know this existed.' This was like a torture camp that's hidden from the rest of the world," said Kanzius. "I said to my wife there has to be a better way to treat cancer."
That better way came to him one sleepless night and he immediately went to work.
"Three o'clock in the morning, I started ripping stuff apart in my wife's cupboard," he told KDKA.
He built an early version of the machine, which sends radio waves between the boxes. It can make a florescent tube light up.
"The interesting thing is, you can put your hand in here and you don't feel anything," said Kanzius.
But the waves definitely affect tiny pieces of metal called nano-particles and causes them to quickly heat up. In just seven seconds, they are hot enough to destroy cancer without damaging nearby tissue.
For some perspective, imagine a dime is a nano-particle. That means the cancer cell would be the size of Heinz Field. It would take twenty of those nano-particles to kill the cancer cell. The physics changes as you widen the space.
Dr. David Geller, co-director of the University of Pittsburgh's Liver Cancer Center, is now testing the treatment on rats with nano-particles made of gold.
"I'm enthusiastic. I think that we have to take it one cancer at a time, one small step forward at a time," said Dr. Geller. "There are no shortcuts to this type of work."
Kanzius says that they have now tackled one big obstacle in finding a way to target not just tumors but also the rogue cancer cells that spread the disease to other parts of the body. They do it by attaching antibodies to the nano-particles, causing them to hunt down the cancer.
Also, Kanzius says he has built a machine to treat the entire body.
"I think this treatment is only going take about 15, 20 seconds max," said Kanzius.
He also says unlike chemotherapy or radiation, the only side effect from the treatment is a cure. However, for now it's only being tested on animals.
Researchers say they are probably about two or three years away from clinical trial.
"I don't know if I'll be around for it to make a difference, but it was never about me, it was always about others," said Kanzuis.