Treatment by directl injection of milligram amounts of ferromagnetic materials into cancer cells or attaching special ligands to the nanoparticles before injection had limited success. Hence a new technique to kill tumour cells that involves loading neural stem cells with iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles and then exposing the cells to a AC magnetic field has been unveiled by a team of researchers at Kansas State University, US. It works because cancer cells are more sensitive to heat than healthy ones.
Working
When magnetic particles introducing into tumour cells, and then heated using an applied magnetic field enough heat is generated to kill the cancer cells may be because the tumour proteome is denatured by the heat generated by the magnetic field.
This technique allows heat to be applied to more precise areas than before. Indeed, the technique has already been tested on many types of human cancer, including recurrent malignant melanoma, lymph node metastasis, glioblastoma, cervical carcinoma, and head and neck cancers.