Carbon Beam Kills Cancer Siemens aims to move "one-shot" cancer
treatment from research labs to a hospital near you 19 November
2003This fall, Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) announced that it
had licensed technology to produce devices that fire carbon-12
(12C) ions at cancerous tumors in an attempt to kill them in one
shot rather than in weeks of treatment with conventional
radiation devices. Siemens says its aim is to bring the
technique, whose first applications will likely be the treatment
of hard-to-reach cancers near vital organs such as the brain or
spinal cord, to hospitals within three years. Researchers and
clinicians have long known that high-energy particles are an
ideal weapon for attacking cancerous cells because, when
delivered in concentrated bursts, they overwhelm the built-in
repair mechanisms of cells. Despite this knowledge, the
effectiveness of such therapy was limited by the high cost,
large size, and relative clumsiness of the tools at hand. But
recent advances have now made it possible to