AUSTIN (KXAN) – A beam of light may be the key to fighting cancer. Researchers with University of Texas and University of Porto in Portugal unveiled a new tool in the healthcare battle: LEDs and tiny metal. Treatment can see the need for the end of chemotherapy.
“One of the things we can leverage against cancer is the fact that cancer cells grow very quickly, so they are very leaky,” he said. Jean-Anne Incorvia is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in the Cockrell School of Engineering.
These leaky cells are key to a new technique: using atomically thin sheets, called 2D material, breaking them down so cancer cells can absorb them, then using near-infrared light produced by LEDs to heat the cancer cells until they explode.
Encorvia said it first learned how 2D materials could be used in medicine at a conference several years ago.
“The bulk of my research is around electronics, so I apply these 2D materials to computing applications,” she said.
In partnership with the University of Porto, her team developed the materials while conducting cancer research abroad. Their work was published this fall in the journal ACS Nano.
Cancer cells explode
Using the compound tin oxide (SnOx), the University of Texas team broke down the material to determine where cells could take it up. These materials are placed under LED light that emits near-infrared radiation, heating the surrounding cells.
Cancer cells will explode. Healthy cells didn’t do that.
The researchers worked on two types of cancer cells, skin cancer and colorectal cancer. “It was able to not kill healthy cells and kill cancer cells very effectively,” Encorvia said.
This takes less than an hour to happen. Because the cells must reach a certain level of heat before they rupture, some treatments may take longer. Cancer cells break down as soon as they appear and are then expelled from the body.
During the research, within just 30 minutes of exposure to the sun, 92% of melanoma cells and 50% of colorectal cancer cells were destroyed.
Bulbs, cancer and hope for the future
The goal of this technology is to reduce the pain of cancer treatments such as chemotherapy. Encorvia said it is possible to use LED devices at home.
Similar techniques have been used before, but those techniques required laser beams that can damage surrounding cells.
All research has been done on cell samples so far. The researchers next hope to work on live samples. They hope it will eventually progress to breast cancer.
Encorvia said it may use LED implants for those treatments. They also hope to explore other 2D materials.
“Our ultimate goal is to make this technology available to patients everywhere, especially places where access to specialized equipment is limited, with fewer side effects and lower cost,” Artur Pinto, a researcher at the University of Porto’s School of Engineering and the project’s principal investigator in Portugal, said in a statement.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world. According to the National Cancer Institute2,041,910 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year.