The real question is always "but how good is it at killing non-cancer cells?" A bullet fired from a gun would be great at killing cancer cells too.<p>Although in this case it seems like it's just an alternative to surgery, rather than a cancer cure? Just a way of vibrating cells in a certain location to death?<p>Does anybody who actually understands medicine know if this is a great breakthrough or not?
> Near-infrared light can go as deep as 10 centimeters (~ 4 inches) into the human body.<p>This attribute of the infrared light is key to treating cancer anywhere in the human body with this method. As long as the patient is not obese, I assume 10 centimeters of penetration depth are enough to reach any part of the body.<p>Penetration depth and the precision of the desired effect is something that is very important in radiation therapy as well. With radiation therapy you basically shoot small particles at the cancer cells but you also damage surroundings if you don't aim precisely enough. Dependig on the depth of the cancer cells inside the body, different particles are used. The amount of damage the particles deal depends on physical effects. Photons deal most of the damage on the surface. More heavy particles like alpha particles deal most of the damage once they are slowed down inside the body. (See Bragg peak <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bragg_peak" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bragg_peak</a> ).
> whole-molecule vibration
Heating it up<p>> Light-induced
with IR light (IR penetrates tissue much better than visible/UV and it's cheaper than microwaves/RF)<p>> can rupture melanoma cells’ membrane
you can cook cancer to death, surprise. The big deal is not cooking everything else, ~~here accomplished with a targeted sensitizer dye that localizes to just those cells~~ Nope, no targeting at all. The advance here is just a new class of IR absorbing dyes that have some cool chemical properties that lend themselves particularly well to disrupting lipid membranes. The reason it's billed as a cancer treatment is because the authors get funding from NIH not NSF, more or less
How many times have we found a new medical use for an existing dye?<p>Prontosil was a pre-penicillin antibacterial based on azo dyes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prontosil#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prontosil#History</a><p>Brilliant blue, a food coloring, was found to help repair spinal injuries <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6719612/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6719612/</a>