The Wonder Material: Graphene
Cancer is a combination of many diseases that include uncontrolled abnormal cells which can grow in any part of the body and can invade and spread to other vital organs. Right now, doctors almost always need to do a biopsy (removing a sample of cells or tissue to examine for cancerous cells) to determine whether a patient has cancer. Biopsies are invasive and can result in other complications such as excessive bleeding. Additionally, the main techniques for the treatment of cancer are surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. These treatments are all useful in managing cancer however they all have significant drawbacks.
With surgery, a patient is put under anesthesia and the tumor is surgically removed. For some cancers, the entire tumor can be removed but for others, only part of it can be removed. Surgery can result in parts of a tumor being left behind which can cause a reoccurrence of the disease. The surgery can also include damage to surrounding normal tissue.
Chemotherapy drugs work by attacking all the rapidly reducing cells in the body however, standard chemo does not differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells. It can end up causing a reoccurrence of cancer since it destroys the body so much. It can also cause more physical side effects such as hair loss, nausea, and vomiting. If the treatment does not manage to kill enough cancerous cells in time, it can cause enough damage to your body that it is not strong enough to fight when cancer returns.
While chemotherapy uses drugs to treat cancer, radiation therapy uses high-energy particles to kill cancer cells. The high-energy particles kill cancer cells by causing damage to their DNA. Unlike chemotherapy which spreads throughout the body, radiation is localized, the energy beams are targeted directly at the cancerous spots in the body, and there is an effort to avoid healthy cells as much as possible. However, radiation therapy can cause excessive damage to surrounding tissue (especially in the lungs and heart) if the cancer cells close by. Additionally, since the treatment is targeted, if the physician does not know that cancer cells exist in a specific place, they will not treat that area. Tumors that cannot be seen on imaging scans are not killed.
We are still in need of new and better ways to combat this deadly disease. This is where graphene comes into play.
Since it was first discovered in 2003, graphene has become something of a “wonder material”. It is composed of carbon atoms arranged in 2-dimensional hexagonal lattices that are only 0.3 nanometers thick. That is about 300,000 times thinner than a strand of hair. The material has unique and powerful properties which give it the potential to have groundbreaking applications in all fields. For example:
1. Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel.
2. It absorbs energy before breaking down and can withstand enormous loads.
3. It is wear-resistant and has a high elasticity. Because of this, it is extremely durable and not prone to breakage
4. It is almost transparent and very light.
5. It can be molded in various ways.
6. It has thermal conductor properties.
7. It reacts chemically with other substances.
8. It has antibacterial effects.
9. It is a good electrical conductor.
10. It is a very dense material. Not even the smallest known atoms (helium) can pass through it. It does allow the passage of water.
11. It is fully capable of withstanding ionizing radiation. (this means that it can be applied in the healthcare field).
On top of all of this, graphene can be combined with other materials to produce new materials that have their own properties.
Graphene can be used to improve treatments to detect and fight cancer. The combination of graphene with different drugs and treatments can improve the different methods researchers are already using.
Detection
Teams of researchers from the University of Illinois observed how graphene can differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells. This makes it a possibility for detecting cancer in a non-invasive way.
They took samples of mouse brain cells and put them on a sheet of graphene to prove that it had the ability to differentiate between healthy cells and cancer cells.
Tumor cells are very hyperactive which shows a lot of electrical activity. Since graphene is an excellent conductor of electricity, when it comes into contact with the cells, it collects a large number of electrons which changes the vibration energy of the carbon atoms.
This change can be detected with high-resolution vibration energy maps.
Reducing Side Effects
Graphene is very useful when treating cancer cells. Patients are injected with graphene particles that are chemically modified to find and stick to the cancer cells. As the material absorbs infrared light, the radiological treatments that the tumor is treated with act directly on the damaged cells without affecting the rest of the body. This reduces the side effects the patient receives.
Neutralizing Cancer
Medical researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of Calabria have found another use for graphene in cancer treatment. After doing many tests on cancer stem cells, they realized that graphene oxide targets and neutralizes cancer cells.
The research teams began testing for cancer stem cells from six types of cancer (breast, pancreatic, lung, brain, ovarian, and prostate) reacted with exposure to graphene oxide. After they were treated for 48 hours, they found that the graphene oxide was able to interrupt the cancer stem cells’ proliferation and forced them to differentiate into non-cancer stem cells. While the researchers do not know the reasons for this, it is believed that graphene oxide interferes with the signaling pathways in cell membranes. The graphene oxide also did not harm any of the healthy skin cells.
Sources
https://www.herox.com/blog/240-graphene-used-to-fight-cancer
https://www.ctoam.com/precision-oncology/why-we-exist/standard-treatment/treatment/chemotherapy/
https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-introduction
https://nanografi.com/blog/applications-of-graphene-in-medicine/
