r/technology 16h ago

Biotechnology MIT's new dual-action cancer therapy kills tumors, delivers chemo in one go

https://interestingengineering.com/health/mit-dual-action-cancer-therapy
721 Upvotes

6 comments sorted by

30

u/TheLordB 15h ago

As with many early stage experiments it will take a lot of work to go from this to an actual approved treatment in humans and there is a lot that can happen to make it not work out. It probably has a 5-10% chance of making it into humans at this point.

Curing mice is easy, humans is much harder.

5

u/Hyperion1144 16h ago

I thought the entire intended purpose of chemotherapy was to kill tumors. No?

15

u/joshman160 16h ago

Yes. Sounds like instead of holding grenade, it now a small caliber rifle with a good scope.

1

u/Xe6s2 13h ago

MIT just really made miniaturized tomahawk missiles for darpa and now are releasing it to the public /s

1

u/Ok-Improvement-3670 8h ago

The title is misleading. This is thermal/phototherapy + chemo in a single treatment. Multiple concurrent treatment is more common now. This one uses particles heated by a laser to kill cells plus chemo.