- A futuristic "microbeam" that zaps individual
cancer cells with a stream of particles could revolutionise radiotherapy,
it was disclosed yesterday. British researchers found that the beam caused
targeted cells to send out suicidal signals to their neighbours.
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- The "bystander" effect meant that many more
cancer cells were killed than were hit by the particles. The technology
could help to make radiotherapy a more potent weapon against tumours and
less damaging to healthy tissue.
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- Scientists at Cancer Research UK's Gray Cancer Institute
helped develop the microbeam, which fires a stream of charged helium particles
just a thousandth of a millimetre wide. To test the beam's effects, they
studied brain cancer cells grown in the laboratory that were highly resistant
to conventional radiotherapy.
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- The researchers targeted single cells in a culture dish
with the beam. They found that hitting just one cell among 1,200 sent a
significant number of its neighbours on the path to suicide. By hitting
just a few cancer cells, the scientists were able to trigger extensive
waves of cell-death.
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- Cancer Research UK's Dr Kevin Prise, heading the experiments
at the Institute in Northwood, north-west London, said: "We used to
assume that the only way to kill cancer cells with radiotherapy was to
hit every one of the cells in the tumour with a fatal dose of radiation.
Now we're finding that it's possible to hit just a handful of cells with
much lower doses and let the cells' natural suicide machinery do the rest.
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- "Our discovery has important implications both for
optimising the effectiveness of radiotherapy and for protecting healthy
tissue from its effects."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
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