The treatment is based on the technology of operating LED lights near the tumor, which would activate vital therapeutic drugs in a specific location, thus protecting healthy cells from the negative effects of these drugs.
Currently used cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, kill cancer cells, but they can also damage healthy cells and cause a number of side effects.
Amit Sachdeva, associate professor in the University of East Anglia’s School of Chemistry, said: “Selective targeting of cancer cells is a major challenge in cancer treatment.
“The light-dependent activation of the antibodies at the tumor site will ensure that the drug is activated at the specific site, and thus will have fewer negative side effects,” Sachdeva added.
He continued, saying: “If the cells in our bodies are houses in a city and we want to send messages to a specific address, we need both the zip code and the house number. If we extend this analogy to many drugs used in the treatment of cancer, the drugs that are used most often In chemotherapy it has no zip code or house number, so its targets are very few.”
He continued, “Cancer phototherapy technology may be used to treat solid tumors in the future, but not to treat non-localized cancers such as leukemia.”
For his part, Piotr Grodziński, who oversees programs for new cancer diagnostics and treatments based on nanotechnology, said: “Scientists use various stimuli, including light, to enhance the accumulation or release of drugs at the tumor site.”
He added: “When any cancer drug is injected systemically into the body, a very small percentage of that dose gets to the site of the tumor, it can be much less than 1 percent.”
He pointed out that scientists are trying to develop targeting techniques that allow for improvements and better accumulation of the drug in the tumor and reduce unwanted side effects in healthy tissues.
#light. #technology #supports #cancer #treatments #achieving #goals