13.56 as a Cancer Cure?
John Kanzius, K3TUP, had an idea - killing cancer cells with radio waves. This had been tried before with poor results. John’s experience in ham radio had taught him that radio energy (RF) can heat objects. But his idea went further. What if the cancer cells were tricked into taking a metal target inside just the tumor cells? John was aware of “nanoparticles.” If the tumor cells, and ONLY the tumor cells, could be made to take in these metallic bits, and if they could then be heated up with RF, would that kill off the tumor or the patient? Recent university animal testing gave the answer - the tumor was destroyed. Now researchers are following John’s lead in exploring a host of life-saving applications.
13.56 MHz as a Cancer Cure? It just might be!
From QST - a magazine of the ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio in the US
In the past months there has been a lot of publicity about John Kanzius and a possible method of destroying cancerous tumors in humans using RF energy and nanoparticles. Animal tests look very good and human testing is on the fast track. But who is this and how does radio fit in?
John Kanzius is a ham, K3TUP, and a cancer survivor. He loves to build what he calls “exotic antennas” at his station. Stacked rotating beams or a rotating tower with multiple beams was a common K3TUP antenna farm. According to John, many well known contesters won world wide contests from his Western Pennsylvania site as guest op’s.
John also is a broadcast engineer who acquired ownership of several radio and TV stations, then sold them as a group and retired to a life of leisure on Sanibel Island - or so he thought. That dream was destroyed in 2002 when he was diagnosed with leukemia.
In between trips to the doctors, he saw the devastation cancers have on human beings and the horrors of chemotherapy’s side effects. Despite the advances in pharmacology and surgery, “cancer” was still a terrifying word. The slow downward spiral that engulfed many lives, let alone his own situation, was summarized by John as, “…hoping we kill the cancer before we kill the person.”
In October 2003 John had an idea - kill cancer cells with radio waves. As every ham knows, radio energy (RF) can heat objects. This was not a new idea and had been tried before with poor results. Previous attempts, called “ablation,” used needles inserted into the patient as the targets for the RF energy. The energy would heat up the needles and cook the tissue surrounding the needle. The problem was that it (a) used needles and (b) cooked everything, both good and bad cells. But John’s idea went further - and this is where the inspiration came. What if, instead of needles, the cancer cells were tricked into taking a metal target inside just the tumor cells?
Like many of us who have great ideas in the middle of the night, it sounded good to him. But unlike most of us, he did not wait until morning. Rather than run the risk of losing the concept in his sleep, John immediately got up in the dark and began work on possible antenna designs by cutting up his wife’s pie pans. Hearing the strange noises in the night his wife, Marianne, investigated. “What the hell are you doing?”
John’s first attempts used copper sulfate, and his first “patient” was a hot dog. But it worked and gave him the confidence to start asking questions of doctors in the field. The next steps were to interest scientific researchers in the concept, build a special transmitter that could safely focus the RF energy, test it out on real tumors, find ways to trick cancerous cells into absorbing the RF target and see if it really was “too good to be true.”
A much better RF target was presented in 2005 when his own personal doctor brought him into contact with Dr. Steven Curley, M.D., a professor at the M.D. Anderson Department of Surgical Oncology at the University of Texas. Dr. Curley found the process promising and brought a present – “nanoparticles.”
Nanoparticles are incredibly small objects, usually metallic, measured in billionths of an inch. If the tumor cells could be made to take these particles internally, and if they could then be heated up with RF, would that kill off the tumor or the patient?
John built a special RF generator for the project. As John says, “Trying to build an array that would heat particles one billionth of a meter in length was challenging. But building equipment all of my life was inspired by my dad, W3NRE, who was licensed in 1934.”
As for attracting serious researchers, John got the interest of Dr. David Geller, a co-director at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in their liver cancer program.
Dr. Curley knew they were on to a major event in medicine. “We could target specific abnormal proteins, put a polar charge on the nanoparticles and use magnets to focus them on those areas of the tumor.”
Dr. Richard Smalley (SK), a Nobel laureate and also a cancer victim, was Rice University’s expert in nanoparticles and especially “fullerenes,” which are made of carbon and include tube shaped particles called “nanotubes.” When Dr. Curley first reported to Dr. Smalley that he actually had seen carbon nanoparticles get very hot when in the beam of John’s RF generator, Smalley is reported to have grasped the importance immediately and exclaimed, “Holy God!”
John is more modest about it and simply writes, “The research scientists at Rice were stunned to see that my device could heat nanoparticles at the 13.56 MHz frequency.”
Dr. Smalley spent the rest of his working days on the project because he believed that this is indeed the breakthrough that had been hoped for by so many millions. Dr. Boris Yakobson, Ph.D., continues the work at Rice.
The rabbit didn’t die
Initial animal testing done at Rice University used rabbits. Being careful that all scientific methods were complete with several control groups, a solution containing carbon nanotubes was injected into cancerous tumors in rabbits. The rabbits had either pancreatic cancer or liver cancers. Four rabbits were the primary test animals for the experiment. After the injection, they were put into the special RF field created by John’s RF generator for two minutes. 48 hours later the results were checked. The tumors in all four had been destroyed by heat, but there was very little damage to neighboring tissues as close as 2-5 mm away.
Science is an exacting discipline. Every aspect of a clinical trial, let alone a revolutionary finding like this one, must withstand extensive peer review and be published for others to test and duplicate. In September 2007 John learned that the paper he co-authored1 had been accepted and would be printed in no less than Cancer, a major oncology medical journal published on behalf of the American Cancer Society in December.
The Future
Unfortunately, even though in vivo animal tests and human cancer cells on Petri dishes have been destroyed by this method and the technology is on “fast track,” actual experiments with living human cancer victims still may be three years away. Meanwhile he has been bombarded with offers and people wanting to make a deal for his invention.
Work continues to progress on the procedure at the world’s largest cancer research center. John wisely patented his RF generator and formed Therm Med, LLC. He now has his RF generators being made in a factory, so his wife’s pie pans are safe again. John is obviously optimistic about it all and credits his Amateur Radio experiences as a fundamental part of the invention process.
“If it were not for my ham radio and all the days of experimentation to improve my station, this new procedure for treating cancer, which continues to show such promising results, would probably not be on the cutting edge at the largest cancer center in the world.”
In the past months others have also become excited as positive results pile up.
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Carbon nanotube-enhanced thermal destruction of cancer cells in a noninvasive radiofrequency field
While the full scientific paper is quite complex, here’s a brief “translation.”
John Kanzius, K3TUP, invented the experimental radiofrequency generator and the concept of using it with nanoparticles serving as targets for RF to “cook” tumor cells internally. John is a cancer survivor, active ham and former radio station owner whose knowledge of the potential effects of targeted radio waves triggered his search for alternatives to chemotherapy.
There have been past attempts to treat cancers and related tumors using RF energy. Most of these past attempts involved inserting needles into the tumors and using RF to heat the needles which then killed any cells in proximity to the needle, both good and bad.
The excitement in John Kanzius’ work is the demonstrated ability to target the RF energy to specific locations by use of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes that release heat energy in an RF field. SWNT’s are incredibly small cylinders with walls one atom thick. Using water-soluble SWNT’s and injecting them into the tumor, the nanotubes are taken up by the tumor cells. Then, using a 13.56 MHz RF field and between 400 and 1000 watts, researchers were able to heat the nanotubes, killing the tumor cells while not harming normal cells.
The RF generator is connected to a high Q coupling system with transmitter and receiver heads which can be swiveled as needed to orient the RF direction. The distance between the Tx and Rx heads is adjustable which changes the field size, shape and density. They usually use an RF field diameter of about 30 cm.
The animal studies that have been completed used carbon SWNT’s injected into rabbit tumors. The results were that there was “total cell necrosis of the tumors” while the animals has no side effects. Current research is looking into ways to use gold SWNT’s coupled to other chemical agents that will only be absorbed by cancerous cells, allowing many more delivery options. There are several agents possible for this and hopes are high that it can be done.
Hams will note that the nanotubes are very small. The carbon ones are about 20 nm (that’s 20 billionths of a meter) and the new gold ones are only 3-5 nm. Meanwhile the wavelength of 13.56 MHz is even longer than our 20 meter band. John reports that he has devices on multiple frequencies of 13.56 MHz. and chose that because it and it’s harmonics are industrial assigned frequencies by the FCC. He was assured not to be interfering with other services and his preliminary tests showed the human body to be transparent to that frequency.
There are currently several theories for the resonance of the nanotubes despite the disparity between size and wavelength. The most supported one is that in an RF field the nanotubes organize themselves in some way, much like iron filings in a magnetic field. They form chains which hit upon a frequency multiple and achieve resonance and heat up - In short, a “self-assembling antenna!”
The next steps are human studies and using agents that will deliver the nanotubes to tumor cells but not healthy cells. For this step they will shift to the use of gold nanotubes instead of carbon because gold nanotubes have already been approved by the FDA for human use. All in all, if it proves out, this could be an easy golden pill to swallow and sure beats chemotherapy!
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1 The primary scientific paper, Carbon nanotube-enhanced thermal destruction of cancer cells in a noninvasive radiofrequency field, was published online on October 24, 2007 and copyrighted by The American Cancer Society. It is to appear in the December issue of their Cancer magazine. It was written by:
Christopher J. Gannon, M.D. (University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center)
Paul Cherukuri, Ph.D. (University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center)
Boris Yakobson, Ph.D. (Rice University, Dept of Chemistry)
Laurent Cognet, Ph.D. (Rice University, Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology)
John S. Kanzius, K3TUP
Carter Kittrell, Ph.D. (Rice University, Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory)
R. Bruce Weisman, Ph.D. (Rice University, Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology)
Matteo Pasquali, Ph.D. (Rice University, Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory)
Howard K. Schmidt, Ph.D. (Rice University, Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology)
Richard E. Smalley, Ph.D. (Rice University, Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory)
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