5 ms·

I'm not sure if this is silly or not but why is it not possible to target cancer cells with a bunch of weak lasers distributed around a person pointing at the s

I'm not sure if this is silly or not but why is it not possible to target cancer cells with a bunch of weak lasers distributed around a person pointing at the same location in 3d space and just selectively zapping them? We have real time MRIs and CT scans. Can't we just lie people with cancer down daily and shoot them with incredibly precise beams of light to cook the cancer cells alive? Maybe just cauterizing the blood pathways that are feeding tumors in the first place? I'm seriously hoping someone can tell me why this idea is stupid.

sxg 7y ago
It's not stupid, and we already do this. There are many different forms of radiation therapy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy), and they're commonly used in breast and brain cancers.
- drenvuk 7y ago
  Thank you for the link. I was reading this section and it seems that accuracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy#Medical_uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy#Medical_uses and movement are the main things that hold it back. I hope they can remedy that.
  - sxg 7y ago
    There are some other limitations as well. Radiation therapy can cause scarring in different tissue types. The scarring can sometimes be problematic depending on the location and extent. Second, the radiation itself can lead to the development of secondary cancers. Often, younger patients with lymphoma receive radiation to the neck area, which can cause thyroid cancers later in life. Despite these drawbacks, radiation therapy is massively beneficial and great for patients. The whole therapy is delivered in ~30 minute sessions over the course of a few weeks, and the entire procedure is painless.
- wizardforhire 7y ago
  Totally! Also for whomever else reading this thread, I’ve been privy to quite a few medical tech startups and let me please share, it’s much simpler than one might imagine to create new medical tech. It’s a remarkably underserved area, the requirements are not quite as hard to get through as it would seem from first glance and I’ve been appalled at many of the systems that are in current use at many hospitals. We’re talking Stone Age level in a lot of ways! If you’re humble, willing to go in and actually listen to the doctors and nurses to identify the real problems and willing to create robust solutions it’s practically the Wild West of opportunities.
  - derefr 7y ago
    What I've always wondered is: how many medical "$100 bills laying on the street" are there to pick up, if you don't care about the need to commercialize (and thus go through FDA rigamarole for) a therapeutic approach, but just want to improve your own health, or the health of someone you love, as a one-off? For pharmaceuticals specifically this is what people call "nootropics"—but there's so much to medicine other than searching for new chemicals to put into people's bodies. I've got to assume that, for example, there's just as many things a clever hardware hacker could do to with e.g. masers or ultrasound or electrolysis or ferromagnetic nanoparticles, to influence the course of a disease; or things a clever biochemist could do by, say, encapsulating existing drugs (or even ordinary non-drug substances) in novel delivery vehicles like cyclodextrin molecules or gel matrices. What medical miracles have been performed once, on a rat in a university research center somewhere, but have never even attempted commercialization?
    - wizardforhire 7y ago
      Spent the last few hours trying to track down this book to no avail but short answer: you’re spot on! Off the cuff in line with your thinking that’s been a life saver for me over the last 20 years... super glue. Locktite gel blue resealable squeeze bottle. Have saved myself at least a dozen trips to the hospital for stitches with this stuff with only one complication last time due to my negligence. Take-away: yes wounds can actually go septic if you don’t properly clean them prior to dressing and yes wounds need to breathe and be dry to heal. On the pharmaceutical side I can’t speak too much to, but I’m firmly convinced after 15 years of personal experimenting that diet (real food, not too much, mostly blah blah blah) and stress management via lifestyle design are the miracles we read about. Add to that mild physical activity, drinking lots of water, good sleep, good mental & physical hygiene and it’s practically a wonder drug.
ddxxdd 7y ago
I'm not a doctor, but I once did a college report on Optical Coherence Tomography a long time ago. The body scatters light. Just like the body scatters sound. Maybe sometime in the future we will have precision devices that can access every frequency of electromagnetism and sound waves to observe and manipulate every cubic millimeter inside a person's body. But that technology doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon.
arcticbull 7y ago
Something similar is already done with ionizing radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery
wrycoder 7y ago
The problem with lasers in the optical spectrum is the scattering of the light by tissue. More penetrating radiation is far less scattered and retains its energy density deep into the body. By concentrating several high energy (x-ray, positrons) sources at the same point, the combined energy at that point can be high enough to cause tumor destruction, while the energy along the path of the individual beams is not high enough to damage healthy tissues. The technique can be applied to optical sources, but it's much more difficult because of the scattering.
deepnotderp 7y ago
Anyone who has actually worked with lasers will tell you that lasers are not quite as precise as we'd like ;) Much like any other form of electromagnetic radiation, they are subject to inverse square law.

sxg 7y ago

It's not stupid, and we already do this. There are many different forms of radiation therapy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy), and they're commonly used in breast and brain cancers.

drenvuk 7y ago
Thank you for the link. I was reading this section and it seems that accuracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy#Medical_uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy#Medical_uses and movement are the main things that hold it back. I hope they can remedy that.
- sxg 7y ago
  There are some other limitations as well. Radiation therapy can cause scarring in different tissue types. The scarring can sometimes be problematic depending on the location and extent. Second, the radiation itself can lead to the development of secondary cancers. Often, younger patients with lymphoma receive radiation to the neck area, which can cause thyroid cancers later in life. Despite these drawbacks, radiation therapy is massively beneficial and great for patients. The whole therapy is delivered in ~30 minute sessions over the course of a few weeks, and the entire procedure is painless.
wizardforhire 7y ago
Totally! Also for whomever else reading this thread, I’ve been privy to quite a few medical tech startups and let me please share, it’s much simpler than one might imagine to create new medical tech. It’s a remarkably underserved area, the requirements are not quite as hard to get through as it would seem from first glance and I’ve been appalled at many of the systems that are in current use at many hospitals. We’re talking Stone Age level in a lot of ways! If you’re humble, willing to go in and actually listen to the doctors and nurses to identify the real problems and willing to create robust solutions it’s practically the Wild West of opportunities.
- derefr 7y ago
  What I've always wondered is: how many medical "$100 bills laying on the street" are there to pick up, if you don't care about the need to commercialize (and thus go through FDA rigamarole for) a therapeutic approach, but just want to improve your own health, or the health of someone you love, as a one-off? For pharmaceuticals specifically this is what people call "nootropics"—but there's so much to medicine other than searching for new chemicals to put into people's bodies. I've got to assume that, for example, there's just as many things a clever hardware hacker could do to with e.g. masers or ultrasound or electrolysis or ferromagnetic nanoparticles, to influence the course of a disease; or things a clever biochemist could do by, say, encapsulating existing drugs (or even ordinary non-drug substances) in novel delivery vehicles like cyclodextrin molecules or gel matrices. What medical miracles have been performed once, on a rat in a university research center somewhere, but have never even attempted commercialization?
  - wizardforhire 7y ago
    Spent the last few hours trying to track down this book to no avail but short answer: you’re spot on! Off the cuff in line with your thinking that’s been a life saver for me over the last 20 years... super glue. Locktite gel blue resealable squeeze bottle. Have saved myself at least a dozen trips to the hospital for stitches with this stuff with only one complication last time due to my negligence. Take-away: yes wounds can actually go septic if you don’t properly clean them prior to dressing and yes wounds need to breathe and be dry to heal. On the pharmaceutical side I can’t speak too much to, but I’m firmly convinced after 15 years of personal experimenting that diet (real food, not too much, mostly blah blah blah) and stress management via lifestyle design are the miracles we read about. Add to that mild physical activity, drinking lots of water, good sleep, good mental & physical hygiene and it’s practically a wonder drug.

ddxxdd 7y ago

I'm not a doctor, but I once did a college report on Optical Coherence Tomography a long time ago. The body scatters light. Just like the body scatters sound. Maybe sometime in the future we will have precision devices that can access every frequency of electromagnetism and sound waves to observe and manipulate every cubic millimeter inside a person's body. But that technology doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon.

arcticbull 7y ago

Something similar is already done with ionizing radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery

wrycoder 7y ago

The problem with lasers in the optical spectrum is the scattering of the light by tissue. More penetrating radiation is far less scattered and retains its energy density deep into the body. By concentrating several high energy (x-ray, positrons) sources at the same point, the combined energy at that point can be high enough to cause tumor destruction, while the energy along the path of the individual beams is not high enough to damage healthy tissues. The technique can be applied to optical sources, but it's much more difficult because of the scattering.

deepnotderp 7y ago

Anyone who has actually worked with lasers will tell you that lasers are not quite as precise as we'd like ;) Much like any other form of electromagnetic radiation, they are subject to inverse square law.