Scheduling regular colonoscopies is the best way to prevent colon cancer. Most colon cancers begin as a polyp on the lining of the colon. Not all polyps develop into cancer, however. With regular screening, these precancerous polyps can be removed before they ever become cancerous.
When colon cancer does develop, there are a several types of treatment including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. But there are some downsides to each. Surgery does not always remove the entire tumor, which can result in recurrence and metastases. Chemotherapy drugs treat the entire body and not just the tumor, which means that only a small percentage of the drug attacks the cancer.
Natalie Artzi, a research scientist at MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, recently led a study on an exciting new treatment: a post-surgical triple-therapy hydrogel patch that treats any remaining cancer cells at the tumor site.
This is how it works: specially designed gold nanorods in the patch heat up when near-infrared radiation is applied to the local area and they destroy the tumor. The patch also releases a chemotherapy drug to target the tumor and surrounding cells. Thirdly, the gold nanospheres that do not heat up in response to the near-infrared radiation deliver gene therapy to the site of the tumor to prevent healthy cells from transforming to cancer cells.
"This means that we are treating both the source of the cancer -- the tumor -- and the metastases resulting from that source, in a suboptimal manner," Artzi says. "That is what prompted us to think a little bit differently, to look at how we can leverage advancements in materials science, and in particular nanotechnology, to treat the primary tumor in a local and sustained manner" (Source: Medical News).