Kanzius Cancer Machine

Have you ever dreamed you'd be the one to find the cure to cancer? Probably not. And just as John Kanzius, but he put the world of cancer treatment on its ear. Let me fill you in.

John Kanzius, a former radio executive of television in Pennsylvania, was diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of leukemia in non-Hodgkin's late fifties. During his 36 rounds of chemotherapy, he was joined by many other patients undergoing similar treatment at Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Houston.

What haunted John, even more than his own situation, has been the face of children in the oncology department Anderson. In a CBS 60 Minutes broadcast in April 2008, John said to the host Leslie Stahl, "I saw the smiles of youth and saw their spirits were broken. And you could see they were sort of asking, "Why can not they do something for me ?'... I still remember to keep them on their teddy bears ... "

Revelation on a sleepless night

The side effect of chemotherapy for John was the extreme nausea and insomnia. On one of those sleepless nights, John had a real "aha" moment. He remembered his childhood where he spent much time radios from scratch and suggestive power of radio waves. Intrigued, he left his bed and went looking for a way to begin to test his idea.

John's wife Marianne woke up late, the sound of rattling metal. It was John - cutting the pie pans kitchen cabinet - and Marianne feared that her husband had lost his mental grip. "She took pity on me," commented John in interviews later.

Hot dogs and cooking utensils Home

idea of John was a matter of great simplicity: essentially, the radio waves are harmless to humans. But focusing on particles of metal and they target the metal with intense heat. What if cancerous tumors were injected with a metal compound, and then zap them with radio waves? Would it kill cancer cells and leave intact the surrounding tissue?

Without surgery?

Without chemo?

No side effects?

Kanzius conducted the first experiments with hot dogs - yes, The All-American Ball Park Frank. First, he injected the hot dog with copper sulfite, while the radio was the hot dog placed in his home-made (from pie pans of his wife) machine radio. Use a thermometer, he compared the temperature of the injected metal site in the non-metal of the hot dog. And now, the heat was concentrated in the areas of metal, while the rest of the hot dog has been cool and in good condition.

"God, maybe I have something here," exclaimed John.

Add a pinch of nanotechnology to the recipe

With a viable idea testing, the trick now seems to be the way to introduce the metallic elements in cancer cells. John Kanzius had shared his theory with his surgeon, Dr. Steven Curley, professor of surgical oncology at Anderson Cancer Center. (This facility, in passing, has been ranked number one in cancer care by U.S. News and World Report for four of the last six years.) Fate decreed that Mr. Curley has another patient who could help Anderson . The patient was Rick Smalley - who won the Nobel Prize for discovering nanoparticles made from carbon.

If you are not familiar with nanotechnology is engineering materials at the atomic level. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, which means you can fit 100,000 of them on the tip of a hair. Researchers have been able to join metallic nanoparticles to cancer cells in mice and rabbits.

Long story short, Dr. Smalley Curley asked for some nanoparticles, explaining why he wanted. Smalley was skeptical, Curley said it would never work and not to get his hopes, but it does give him a vial of nanoparticles to know the experience.