Cancer-Killer

Okay, now here's somebody accomplishing something useful with his life, and it's a fellow member of my tribe (hat tip: Instapundit). Balaji Panchapakesan, a researcher at Delaware, is coming up with a cool way to kill cancer cells...

He and a handful of colleagues and students at UD and at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson Medical School have devised a method of exploding cancer cells with "nanobombs." They figured out how to attach unimaginably small single-walled carbon tubes to cancer cells via proteins. When a laser is directed at the tubes, they heat up and explode, killing the cancer cell. Like a cluster bomb, the tube causes a chain reaction that also kills nearby cancer cells.

If the aloneness he felt on Mount Kilimanjaro is an integral part of the human condition, so is searching and researching, Panchapakesan says. "My goal is to search for the meaning and truth of my own life."

That ultimate personal goal has helped fire the imagination of his scientific and engineering work, which has this ambition: To kill cancer cells without killing any cells around them. This is in stark contrast to chemotherapy, which indiscriminately kills everything it touches around the cancer.

The nanotubes are a billionth of a millimeter, much smaller than a cell, and, "Potentially, they can be used on different types of cancer cells, including breaking up blood clots," he says. About 100,000 nanotubes could pack themselves together on the width of one strand of human hair.

It's cool to hear about someone using their mind to solve problems rather than create them or bitch about them.