My last posting about targeted alpha therapy discussed the expense of preparing a sample of radioactive actinium, aside from which, targeted alpha therapy should be a very effective and specific and hopefully affordable cancer therapy. Quentin Pankhurst of the London Centre for Nanotechnology has been working with particles of iron oxide, which has very low toxicity and can be attached to antibodies just like the actinium atoms in cages. Iron oxide can be magnetized so each particle can be a permanent magnet. A magnetized particle can then be detected from outside the body using a weak EM field generated by a hand-held device, or it can be heated with a strong EM field, to the point of destroying the cancer cell .

By combining the iron oxide particle with an antibody for the HER2 protein found in breast cancer cells, Pankhurst should be able to achieve the same specificity and effectiveness that Sloan-Kettering has gotten with radioactive actinium, at vastly lesser cost. In order to commercialize this and related applications, Pankhurst has founded Endomagnetics, a start-up based in Houston, Texas.

Why should iron oxide be so much less expensive than radioactive actinium? “Iron oxide” is the chemical name for rusty metal, which is easy to make and store, and readily available in auto scrap yards everywhere. Actinium-225, the isotope used for TAT, has a half-life of ten days, so you can’t make a big batch and store some for later use. According to this website at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory: “The actinium-225 is formed from radioactive decay of radium-225, the decay product of thorium-229, which is obtained from decay of uranium-233. The National depository of uranium-233 is at ORNL, and we have developed effective methods for obtaining thorium-229 (half-life 7340 years) as our feed material to routinely obtain actinium-225.“

The idea to build microscopic machines and operate as building robots for the production of the organization and reorganization of the objects at the molecular level is not easy to believe when there is not to introduce this technology. This concept was proposed by Richard Feynman in his 1959 speech “A lot of space at the bottom.” It was the first conference to deal with the principles of nanotechnology, but it was not a new idea.

Before Feynman talked about the idea of nanotechnology, which has already been proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. He proposed an experiment of small entity called Maxwell’s demon is able to manipulate individual molecules.

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy was the first to use the characterization of nano-sized particles, in 1914. It was determined that 1 / 10, 00000 of an inch of which developed the first classification system based on the size of nanoscale particles. Law

Moore has better codified the concept of influence. Gordon Moore of Intel predicted in 1965 about how modern circuits contain more features than many devices have been produced for the market. This law has been maintained for almost 50 years.

Nanotechnology has been defined by Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo Science University in 1974. Was the treatment of separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or molecule.

The concept of nanotechnology to engineering through molecular manufacturing concept was first applied by Eric Drexler. He suggested that if the atoms are considered then tight ball molecules marble collection. These molecules have become standard tools such as ladder engines when snapped together. Despite the size of the nanoscale, these tools work the same way as their larger counterparts did. The moving parts of nano machines have been formed by atoms held together by the force of its own obligations. Drexler finally expected that these nano robots would be used as an assembler to pick up the atoms in any way.

By applying this simple view of what the molecule to the industry, Drexler argues that coal can be converted into diamond chips and the equipment can be sand. By rearranging the atoms that compose these materials, the process is drastically reduced and its products of value occurs at a faster rate. This is why nanotechnology was presented by Drexler and science exclusively revolved around the molecule of manufacture.