A New Light-Based Cancer Treatment Kills Tumor Cells and Spares Healthy Ones

in the fight against cancerAn important area of ​​research is finding safer alternatives to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. These treatments attack both cancer cells and healthy cells, causing patients to experience serious side effects.

A team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Porto in Portugal just brought an alternative one step closer. They have developed materials capable of efficiently and safely converting near-infrared light, or NIR, into heat that can be highly targeted against cancer cells. Their constituents are tin oxide (SnO_x) nanoflakes, tiny particles less than 20 nanometers thick (a nanometer is one thousand-millionth of a meter).

The team’s findings, published in the journal ACS NanoThis type of light-based treatment offers new hope for the design of photothermal therapy.

A photothermal therapy is a non-invasive method that uses heat to destroy cancer cells. It works by injecting cancer cells with substances that absorb light and turn it into heat – in this case, SnO._x Nanoflakes – which can be designed in such a way that they accumulate specifically in tumor tissue. They are then targeted with light at a wavelength that gives these cells the energy they need to produce cancer-killing heat but that doesn’t harm healthy tissue.

The researchers propose that their SnO_x Nanoflakes can improve this type of treatment by offering greater thermal efficiency, biocompatibility and affordability than other materials used in such processes.

“Our goal was to create a treatment that was not only effective but also safe and accessible,” said Jean Ann Incorvia, a UT engineering professor and one of the project’s leaders. Press statement. “With a combination of LED light and SnO_x Nanoflex, we have developed a method to precisely target cancer cells without touching healthy cells.”

To evaluate the thermal efficiency of their new material, the team developed a proprietary system based on near-infrared LEDs (NIR-LEDs) that emit light at a wavelength of 810 nanometers, which is safe for biological tissues. Unlike traditional laser systems, NIR-LEDs provide more homogeneous and stable illumination, reduce the risk of overheating and require minimal investment. The complete experimental set-up, capable of irradiating up to 24 samples simultaneously, costs about $530, making it an affordable and versatile tool for biomedical research.

Results of NIR beaming on SnO_x-Treated cancer cells are encouraged. UT reported that in less than 30 minutes of exposure, the method killed up to 92 percent of skin cancer cells and 50 percent of colorectal cancer cells. This was achieved without any harmful effects for healthy skin cells, demonstrating the safety and selectivity of this method.