A new type of cancer treatment can destroy up to 90% of skin and colon cancer cells in just 30 minutes. It does so by using a combination of LED and metallic “nanoflakes”.
These nanoflakes look fragile at first—thin, translucent flakes no wider than a cell. But once near-infrared light strikes them, they transform, radiating heat with enough intensity to wipe out cancer cells nearby.
In a new study published in ACS Nano, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Porto in Portugal describe how this approach could make light-based cancer therapy safer, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before.
A Healing Light
Modern cancer treatments use different approaches. Sometimes, they try to use the body’s own immune system; other times, they use chemo or radiotherapy. But one particularly promising idea is to harness light to fight cancer. Basically, if you could use light to heat up and kill tumors, you’d have a great way to defeat cancer. The first problem is that you need to do this inside the body, and the second part is that it’s hard to do this while protecting healthy cells.
The researchers’ solution pairs low-cost near-infrared LEDs with tiny tin oxide flakes, or SnOx nanoflakes, that heat up only where needed. Each flake, less than 20 nanometers thick, acts like a precision heater when struck by LED light at 810 nanometers—destroying cancer cells while sparing surrounding tissue.
“Our goal was to create a treatment that is not only effective but also safe and accessible,” said Jean Anne Incorvia, a professor in UT Austin’s Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “With the combination of LED light and SnOx nanoflakes, we’ve developed a method to precisely target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells untouched.”
The team developed the flakes through a simple, water-based process that transforms tin disulfide into light-sensitive tin oxides. This green, scalable method produced nanocrystals capable of turning almost all incoming light into heat with a 93% conversion efficiency. In cell tests, the treatment killed 92% of skin cancer cells and about half of colorectal cancer cells in just 30 minutes, without affecting healthy skin cells.
“Our ultimate goal is to make this technology available to patients everywhere, especially places where access to specialized equipment is limited, with fewer side effects and lower cost,” said Artur Pinto, the project’s lead researcher in Portugal. He envisions a small, portable device that could be applied to the skin after surgery, quietly eliminating any remaining cancer cells and lowering the risk of recurrence.
Precision Without Harm
Cancer cells absorb and retain nanoparticles more readily than normal cells. Their membranes are leakier, and they divide much faster, which means they tend to “swallow” foreign particles more easily. This phenomenon, known as the enhanced permeability and retention effect, lets the tin oxide (SnOx) nanoflakes accumulate inside tumors much more than in healthy tissue.
When the LED light is focused on a tumor, only the cells that have taken up the nanoflakes heat up. Healthy cells, which either don’t contain the flakes or have only trace amounts, remain at normal temperature.
Because the LEDs are low intensity compared to traditional lasers, the surrounding tissue isn’t exposed to damaging heat. That’s why the researchers observed up to 92% cancer cell death in lab cultures but no measurable harm to healthy skin fibroblasts.
The material fabrication method is relatively “green” and scalable, meaning the nanoflakes can be produced in simpler conditions than some previous nanomaterials.
Early Days
So far, results are limited to cell cultures. To know whether this works safely and effectively in living tissue (with all its complexity: blood flow, immune response, deeper tumors, etc.), researchers must test in animals and then in humans. This can take years, even over a decade, but the results are promising, and the stakes are high.
Cancer remains the second leading cause of death worldwide, responsible for nearly 10 million deaths per year. While surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation remain the main tools, researchers have been searching for therapies that are both less invasive and more selective.
Photothermal therapy holds great promise, but high costs and technical complexity have limited its use until now. By swapping lasers for LEDs and gold for tin, the UT Austin–Portugal team may have found a way to make the approach both affordable and practical.
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