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December 11, 2003
Battling Cancer with Antimatter
Before you think - Antimatter? What are they thinking? - consider that the common medical imaging technique called PET, or positron emission tomography, already employs the antimatter equivalent of electrons to detect tumors.
Now researchers working at CERN have found that another antimatter particle, the antiproton, has potential not merely to detect cancer, but to effectively treat it.
At CERN, researchers have been studying how antiproton beams interact with living cells. As expected, antiprotons strip electrons off atoms in the cells, a process called ionization. The process rips the host molecules apart, killing the cell they are in. If the energy of the antiproton beam is chosen carefully, it can be aimed precisely at a tumour within a human body.
A proton beam could be used for ionization just as well, but when the particles in an antiproton beam eventually come to a stop at the focus, they drift until they collide with ordinary protons. This collision results in the annihilation of both particles in a matter-antimatter reaction, releasing a huge amount of energy (in the context of a single cell)....which is much more effective at killing selected cells than simple ionization.
CERN scientists estimate that routine clinical application of matter-antimatter annihilation to cancer treatment should be a reality in 10-15 years.
Posted by Sam in Health & Medicine