Contact: Dr. Thanos Mitrelias and Dr Marina Tselepi, Cavendish Laboratory & Cavendish NanoTherapeutics
Mentor: Bob Pettigrew
Cavendish NanoTherapeutics is a spin-out from the thin-film magnetism group at the Cavendish Laboratory. Its products are designed to assist in the treatment of cancers by using magnetic fields, and are based on more than 15 years of research.
Its first generation product MagTherm® is a portable system which creates a localised field of non-ionising electromagnetic radiation. Tests have shown that using this radiation on cancerous tissue, either during chemotherapy treatments, or shortly after traditional radiotherapy, can dramatically increase lung and breast cancer survival rates from 30%-300%. The product is currently undergoing formal regulatory processes to allow it to be sold commercially as an adjunct treatment to traditional treatment regimes.
The localised field causes mild hyperthermia in the treated tissue, raising the temperature locally to about 39C. It also seems to attract and focus free radicals in the bloodstream to the treated area.
The questions for the i-Team are:
(i) to carry out an investigation into other systems and technologies that are similar to MagTherm® (i.e. which use hyperthermia as a treatment for cancer) and in particular any technologies/systems that have gained FDA approval and/or are in use in various markets such as US, Germany, Korea, China, Latin America, Japan and India,
(ii) to investigate alternative uses for the MagTherm® product. Are there other diseases and ailments that are currently eased using heat, and which of those would benefit from the use of MagTherm®?