John Kanzius invented a form of cancer treatment even as he was being treated for his own cancer

John Kanzius developed a unique new method to rid the body of cancer cells. The former businessman and radio technician has no formal experience as an inventor. But he did build radios as a child.

Kanzius's Invention

The former cancer patient decided to use his knowledge of radio waves. He built a radio wave machine that many researchers around the world believe can kill cancer cells.

John Kanzius recently died. But his work is being carried on by Dr. Steven Curley of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Kanzius' theories were published in the journal Cancer in 2007. That article discusses the Kanzius RF generator and gold nanoparticles. These are used to kill human cancer cells in the livers of rabbits. One hundred percent of the cancer cells were killed with no known side effects to the animals tested.

Kanzius used to live in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 2002, he retired to Sanibel, Florida. While living there, he was diagnosed with a rare, incurable form of leukemia, a cancer of the bone marrow and blood. His chemotherapy treatments made him nauseous and unable to sleep.

One sleepless night, he built a radio frequency generator thinking that radio waves could kill cancer cells by heating them. He later tested his theory with a hotdog injected with a metallic solution of copper sulfate. The injected site heated up while the rest of the hotdog remained cool. That simple experiment told him that his machine might kill cancer cells without damaging other tissues.

Kanzius first built a prototype Kanzius RF device in his home. The he formed Therm Med., LLC to test and market his invention. The device was successfully tested at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2005.

How it Works

The machine works by having living cells absorb radio waves at certain wavelengths. But there's more to this invention, using metals as a conduit. Metals absorb this energy much more efficiently than cells do and then they heat up. Kanzius reasoned that heat could kill cancer if he could find a way to get metals to the cancer cell location.

Richard Smalley, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, suggested using carbon nanotubes (which he discovered) to get to the cancer cells. If the nanoparticles can be bound to the cancer sites, he reasoned, cancer cells would be destroyed or induced into apoptosis (death). Meanwhile, healthy tissues would be relatively unharmed.

Kanzius' invention is not yet ready for clinical trial on people. The gold or carbon nanotubes need to be engineered to attach themselves to cancer cells. It will be especially difficult to attach the nanotubes to metastasized cancer cells that have spread through the bloodstream to other parts of the body.

Scientists engaged in colon cancer research are working at targeting molecules. These molecules would hone in on special proteins that exist only in cancer cells.

Dr. Steven Curley and Dr. David Geller of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are enthusiastic about the Kanzius machine. They believe that the machine, combined with nanoparticles, represent a major breakthrough in cancer treatment.

John Kanzius died from pneumonia on February 18, 2009 at a hospital near his winter home. The pneumonia developed as a complication from two recent rounds of chemotherapy.

Protect Yourself From the High Cost of Cancer

According to the recent studies, American men have a 44% chance of developing cancer while the chances for women are about 37%. The general risk of developing colon cancer in the United States is about 6%. For this reason, it's important for everyone, particularly people above the age of 50 years, to go for routine screening.

Whether discovered early or late, cancer is a debilitating disease due to the care, costs and the mental and physical trauma involved. Many times the cost of treatment leaves the patient in heavy financial distress.

Most insurance plans do not cover the total cost of the treatment, which leaves the patient and their family in a lurch. These days people have started purchasing supplemental cancer insurance that can help in covering otherwise uninsured expenses related to cancer illness.

Written by Margaret Stenerson - 4/21/09