'Tuning' Out Cancer: Engineer Conceives Radio Wave Treatment

Nov. 2, 2007 (KABC-TV) (KABC) -- When it comes to fighting cancer, most of us are happy to leave it up to the doctors and researchers. One former radio engineer felt there had to be a better way, so he used his electronics experience to develop a kinder and gentler method. He's using radio waves to kill cancer cells.

Five years ago, when doctors told John Kanszius he had leukemia and didn't have long to live, the former broadcasting executive and engineer didn't dwell on his demise. Instead he focused more on the suffering of other cancer patients around him.

"I noticed young kids losing their smiles, losing their hair, and I said to myself, today's chemotherapy is cruel. There's got to be a better way to cure cancer," said Kanszius of the Cancer Treatment Developer.

He didn't know medicine, but he knew radio waves. Relying on his experience as a technical assistant at RCA, an idea just hit him. He used his wife's pie pans and spare radio parts to create a machine that heats and destroys cancer cells.

"He is a private citizen who just came up with this idea and had the wherewithal and tinkering ability to actually produce the equipment to do this," said Dr. Steven Curley, M.D. at the Anderson Cancer Center.

Dr. Steven Curley and his colleagues took the invention Kanszius made in his garage very seriously. They used his radio wave technique to completely destroy liver cancer tumors in rabbits as part of a study they're publishing in the journal Cancer.

The hope is patients will receive nanoparticles that will attach themselves to cancer cells. The radio waves will seek and destroy diseased cells, leaving the healthy ones unharmed.

Cancer experts are quick to point out this research is very preliminary.

"I would guess, based on what we know now, that we're probably five years from the first clinical trials in humans," said cancer researcher Dr. Robert C. Young. "Hopefully it will be faster."

Kanzius' illness is now in remission, and he is careful when asked whether he thinks his invention can ever be used on him.

"My only wish is that I could be around long enough to see the first human trials," said Kanzius.

The chairman of radiation oncology at U.S.C., Dr. Parvesh Kumar says Kanzsius' treatment is similar to radio frequency ablation -- it delivers electrical energy to a tumor through a catheter. But the tumor has to be easily accessible.

Theoretically, this new technique would be able to treat cancer anywhere in the body. But Dr. Kumar says it still needs a lot of testing.

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