Florida Man's Cancer Treatment Idea Looks Promising John
Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation
Doctors Excited About Use Of Radio Waves
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- More than 1.3 million people
will get cancer this year, and 570,000 will die from it. A
Florida man with no medical training whatsoever may be on
the right track.
John Kanzius and his wife, Marianne, retired to Sanibel
Island in 2002, but any thoughts of a relaxing retirement
were postponed six months later, when Kanzius was diagnosed
with a rare form of leukemia.
While undergoing chemotherapy, he endured a lot of
sleepless nights.
"There's nothing good about today's modern treatment for
cancer," said Kanzius.
He was 58 when he was diagnosed and decided he would
fight the good fight, but felt he had lived a full life.
What disturbed him was watching young cancer patients
struggle.
"You could see the life go out of their bodies," he said.
It was during this period of prolonged insomnia that the
former broadcasting executive had a new mission.
While he wasn't naive enough to think he could cure
cancer, he felt maybe something in his engineering
background would come in handy.
As a former owner of radio and television stations,
Kanzius had a lot of electronic equipment around the house.
"I began one night trying to see if I could transmit high
energy waves through a short space," he said.
Kanzius told his friend, Dr. Robert McDonald, of
Southwest Florida Regional Medical center, about cutting up
his wife's pie pans to help send radio waves from point "A"
to point "B."
"He said he was able to cook hot dogs using this, and I
was blown away," said McDonald.
Kanzius continued to fine tune his work to see if the
radio waves could be targeted to attack specific cells.
Kanzius discovered that neighboring cells were
unaffected. He now now holds seven patents on his
technology.
In recent months, Kanzius' work has gotten the attention
of some very important researchers who believe he's on to
something big. At the University of Pittsbrugh Medical
Center, the first Kanzius protoype is being used by Dr.
David Geller.
Geller is testing the radio-wave theory on lab rats with
tumors.
"I think this has potential to be cutting-edge
technology; it's certainly novel," said Geller. "There's
nothing out there like it." UPMC isn't the only place
working with Kanzius' invention.
Dr. Steven Curley is a program director at the M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, where Kanzius underwent
treatment. "Current radio frequency treatment require
literally sticking a needle or needles into tumors and
turning on an electrical current that will heat the tumor
slowly," said Curley.
Curley sees two major advantages to the invention.
"First, it's external and non-invasive -- no needles
placed in the tumor or the body. Second, it would allow us
to treat tumors much more rapidly than current equipment
allows us to use," he said. "The ability to non-invasively
treatment somebody is truly the holy grail of cancer."
Curley's team has ordered two of Kanzius' prototypes to
begin testing on pigs and rabbits, and if the data lines up,
tests could begin on humans within two years, pending FDA
approval.
Kanzius says what's been amazing is that the medical
field has come to him and he hasn't had to beg for funding
from Washington. Diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease,
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter spearheaded a $200,000 grant
to test Kanzius' invention. "This new idea for treating
cancer sounds innovative and very, very promising," said
Specter.
Kanzius says the momentum from his idea has snowballed
and is now a full-fledged avalanche.
He's just trying to keep an even keel, as he stands on
the brink of what could be one of the greatest medical
breakthroughs of modern times.
"To think that two to three years from now, I might be
able to watch somebody that's been treated and have a doctor
say to that person, 'You've been cured' -- that would be all
I'm looking for," said Kanzius. |
