Patient becomes unlikely inventor of
cancer-fighting technology
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04207/351514.stm
Sunday, July 25, 2004
By David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
During sleepless nights caused by the steroids he was taking during cancer chemotherapy, John Kanzius decided to use his drug-induced insomnia wisely.
He spent the wee hours at his computer, studying the structure of normal cells and how they differed from cancer cells. He became fluent in cancer biology, including his own rare B-cell form of leukemia, and eventually amassed 100 pounds of medical research.
Then he went one step further. Drawing on his background in electronics and his knack for solving problems, Kanzius, 60, developed a possible method for treating cancer with radio waves.
A former partner in an Erie broadcasting company, Kanzius said he was particularly hopeful that his 15-month scientific odyssey had produced a cancer therapy that will have a minimum of harmful side effects.
"I didn't wake up one day to see if I could cure cancer," he said. "I just woke up one day hoping to reduce the suffering."
As of yet, Kanzius' method has not been tested in animals, much less proven to work, and it could be years before researchers would be ready to try using the therapy in human patients or to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
But the invention has attracted interest and praise from the small group of doctors who are aware of it. Kanzius also says some biotech firms have expressed interest in financing its development, though he wouldn't name them.
He applied in May for a patent on his invention, which combines a device for focusing radio waves on cancer cells with an as-yet undisclosed technique for sensitizing cancer cells to the effects of radio frequency radiation.
He said his attorneys had cautioned him against revealing details of his invention until the patent is approved. But doctors who have reviewed it under confidentiality agreements are enthusiastic about Kanzius' unlikely creation.
One of them, Dr. Robert J. McDonald, director of nuclear medicine at the Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center in Fort Myers, Fla., said the invention was "absolutely amazing" and "pretty incredible."
And Dr. Jan Rothman, an oncologist and hematologist at the Erie Regional Cancer Center, agreed his former patient's creation "has great potential."
Dr. David A. Geller, co-director of the Liver Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said the invention had potential as a breakthrough if tests confirm that it works. That commercial firms are interested in developing it is an achievement in itself.
The real story, McDonald insists, is how Kanzius, without a degree in electrical engineering and without a medical background, came up with a treatment of such promise.
"John is onto something very, very big," said McDonald, who became a friend of Kanzius' and has swapped ideas about cancer therapy while fishing with him. It's inconceivable, he said, for "someone with his background to come up with this. This is a movie."
Medicine vs. electronics
Kanzius always had been interested in medicine. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, but in the new age of transistors of the 1960s, his father persuaded him to pursue a grander future in solid-state electronics.
After graduating in 1962 from Trinity Area High School in North Franklin, he earned a technical degree from the Allegheny Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He landed a job with RCA in Washington County while he pursued an electrical engineering degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
His plans soon changed, he said, after RCA assigned him to a project to solve signal distortion problems in television transmitters that had puzzled company engineers for years. It took Kanzius a half hour to solve the problem with a 10-cent part.
RCA officials quickly upgraded Kanzius to special assistant and troubleshooter, sending him across the country to solve problems with radio and television transmitters.
With his electronic expertise established, he joined Jet Broadcasting Co. Inc. in 1966, becoming a partner in 1982, then president in 1983. Jet owned the ABC television station WJET and two radio stations in Erie, with affiliate companies that owned stations in Pittsburgh; Youngstown, Ohio; and San Antonio.
But he decided to end his broadcast career after he was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2002. He sold his stations, the last one in November, and retired to focus on his health.
"If something was abnormal, I'd look it up in medical books," he said of his condition. "I could pick up my blood tests and know what I was looking at."
But it took a while before doctors knew the precise type of leukemia he had. He underwent chemotherapy in Erie for six months but suffered a relapse. Next, he went to the Cleveland Clinic and underwent an unsuccessful experimental treatment at Ohio State University.
At wit's end, he sent an e-mail to Dr. Michael Keating, a leukemia expert at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
"I hope your eyes see this e-mail," Kanzius wrote, hoping to persuade Keating to review his medical records and give him a diagnosis. Keating agreed and ultimately diagnosed rare B-cell leukemia.
"I think I can cure you," Keating told him. He prescribed an aggressive chemotherapy regimen that Kanzius underwent in Erie and Florida. He met McDonald when he was in Florida for a PET scan.
By then, Kanzius had witnessed a parade of sad, sickened, fatigued patients going through the brutal treatment routine. "You see 2-year-old kids hoping to make it to 5," he said.
And he recalled watching his mother and other relatives die of cancer. He was appalled by the suffering caused by not just the disease, but by chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
It left him with a thought: "There must be some way to improve this."
Troubleshooter
Kanzius reverted to his troubleshooting mode.
Already schooled in cancer basics, and still undergoing chemotherapy, he turned to what he knew best: Trusty radio waves.
Kanzius knew that metals exposed to radio or television transmitters heated up. And, it turned out, the idea of using radio waves to heat and kill cancer cells is nothing new: A technique called radio frequency ablation has been widely used for the past five years to treat inoperable liver tumors and might also prove effective against such tumors as prostate, lung and bone.
But while radio frequency ablation requires placing needle-like electrodes directly into the tumor, Kanzius was convinced that the invasive procedure could be eliminated. Kanzius designed a complex transmitter that could focus radio waves of different modulations and multiple frequencies on tumors.
While that alone might be a valuable tool, he decided to try to go further and find a way of targeting cancer cells to make them more vulnerable to radio waves. The ability to treat cancer cells while avoiding damage to healthy cells has been the Holy Grail of cancer therapy for generations.
Kanzius won't detail his technology while his patent is pending.
"All of these technological components already exist," he said. "I took a bunch of technology, the best of all of them, and made a marriage of them.
"I enhance cancer cells to accept radio waves -- absorb the heat without collateral damage," Kanzius said. "The tumor gets nothing more than 8 degrees above normal."
Kanzius tested his invention, burning holes through steaks and organs and refining the equipment's precision and temperature control.
Geller, who uses radio frequency ablation routinely at UPMC, said Kanzius' technique would be an advance if it could eliminate the need to surgically place electrodes in tumors. How broadly the technique might be used on liver tumors and other cancers will depend on further refinement of the radio wave device and animal testing of the cancer-targeting technique, he said.
"This could be a revolutionary breakthrough," Geller said. "He's proven the basic concepts."
Geller said he was interested in working with Kanzius to further develop the method so that it can be used in human patients.
"I would hope UPMC would be the first medical center that would look forward to testing it on animals and do the first clinical trials," he said.
Rothman, the Erie oncologist, said Kanzius' method offered many advantages. It's simple and inexpensive without side effects or quality-of-life reductions for patients. There would be no limit on how often a person could receive the treatment.
Although Kanzius' cancer has been in remission since the Keating treatment, he said, the day could come when he needs to be treated with his own creation.
Radio frequency ablation is used to treat solid tumors only, so Kanzius said he never expected his invention to work against leukemia, a blood cancer. But he said Keating had convinced him it might be effective even against leukemia.
"That was not my intent," Kanzius said of his inventive efforts. "But that was a pleasant gift. ... I would like to see kids with cancer grow up. I would like to see the first person get treatment and know it works, and see that person's face and the faces of family members.
"I would like to see the doctor say, 'You no longer have pancreatic or prostate cancer.' That would be the day I'd like to see."
To your health and success.
Robert C