Scientists Find Breakthrough Use of Light to Kill Cancer Cells
In a world-first, scientists have developed a breakthrough treatment that uses light to kill cancer cells.
We often think of light as a life-giving source, but in the case of photoimmunotherapy — the use of light to help a person’s own immune system fight cancer — light can both be a source of life, for the patient, and death, to cancer cells.
A multidisciplinary team of European scientists joined forces to design the new treatment, which works by combining a special fluorescent dye with a cancer-targeting compound.
Shining light on the compound forces cancer cells to glow in the dark, helping surgeons to remove more of the tumors compared with existing techniques.
Then, the surgeon would shine near-infrared light on the site, switching the compound into tumor-killing mode and killing off any remaining cells.
The trial of this therapy was done on mice with a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.
Findings showed that the mice had clear signs of tumor death in as little as one hour after exposure to the light. The treatment also triggered an immune response that could mount a new attack on cancer should it come back.
Study leader Dr. Gabriella Kramer-Marek told The Guardian, “Brain cancers like glioblastoma can be hard to treat, and sadly, there are too few treatment options for patients. Surgery is challenging due to the location of the tumors, and so new ways to see tumor cells to be removed during surgery and to treat residual cancer cells that remain afterward could be of great benefit.”
Scientists are quite hopeful that the results will be duplicated when they study the treatment of humans. In the meantime, this trial has shined a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
New Dr. Joe Dispenza Study Shows Meditators’ Blood Resists Illness
A cutting-edge, new study by Dr. Joe Dispenza is showing the connection between meditation and our body’s capacity to heal itself.
“Our nervous system tends to be the greatest pharmacy in the world,” Dr. Joe Dispenza said.
Dr. Joe Dispenza has spent a career, as he puts it, “demystifying the mystical” to that end. After leading week-long meditation retreats for years, he noticed miraculous changes among the participants, with some even claiming to have long-standing afflictions cured, seemingly by meditation alone. So, he decided to put it to scientific testing and partnered with the University of California San Diego biology department.
They tested advanced meditators, novice meditators, and a control group, and the results have been fascinating.
“We started looking closely at cellular function, and we started measuring thousands of cellular metabolites that determine whether a cell is in growth and repair or a cell is in breakdown,” Dr. Joe Dispenza said. “At the end of seven days, I get a call from our senior research analyst and he says ‘We have some really compelling things to show you,’ and we saw dramatic changes in the biology of advanced meditators. So when we started looking at the cellular function, we noticed along with the change in cellular function (for those people that watch Rewired) there was this arousal that was taking place in the person’s brain and in their nervous system. The arousal wasn’t pain, the arousal wasn’t fear, and the arousal wasn’t anger or aggression — which typically causes an arousal from the sympathetic nervous system — the person was reporting an arousal and the only word they could use was ‘ecstasy’ or ‘bliss,’ they had made some connection with something. So when we captured the blood of these people and when they made some type of connection, we noticed some really powerful effects in their blood plasma.”
But when they took the blood samples of these meditators into the lab they were in for a big surprise.
