Cancer — A person’s presence can drain a room’s energy in a number of ways.

A person who is always negative, criticizing, or moaning, for example, may have a bad impact on the attitude and morale of others around them.

Someone who is really apprehensive or stressed out may emanate a tight or unpleasant energy that affects others.

Furthermore, a person who dominates conversations or takes up a lot of physical space in a room may produce discomfort or suffocation for others in the room..

These are only a few examples of how a person’s demeanor or behavior may alter the ambiance in a room, and it is vital to be aware of how our actions influence others around us.

While this may be distressing for people, it is considered a fantastic idea if a battery can do the same for a tumor.

Batteries and tumors

A mouse study discovered that encircling a tumor with a tiny self-charging battery can take oxygen from the cancer cell’s surrounding, enhancing the efficiency of cancer therapy.

In the March 31 issue of Science Advances, researchers reported that mice had small batteries wrapped around their breast cancer tumors.

In two weeks, when combined with cancer therapy, the tumor volume decreased by 90%.

Solid tumors, such as breast cancer, commonly expand, growing faster than the blood supply can keep up with.

Many tumors’ cores may be hypoxic, with lower oxygen levels than the surrounding tissue, due to growth.

Hypoxia

Yongyao Xia, a materials scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai who specializes in battery materials, said:

“Hypoxia is a double-edged sword.”

Low oxygen levels in tumors indicate that the body’s immune cells are unable to survive long enough to eliminate the malignant cells.

Furthermore, Fan Zhang, a biomedical materials researcher at Fudan University, noted that hypoxic cells resist radiation and traditional chemotherapies due to insufficient blood flow to provide a deadly dose.

Xia and Zhang assert in a new study:

“On the other hand, it provides a target for precision treatment of tumors.”

Prodrugs

Hypoxia may operate as a signaling molecule for compounds known as hypoxia-activated prodrugs.

According to Qin Zhang, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, chemotherapeutic drugs are linked to a linking molecule that ensures the treatment is only active in low-oxygen settings.

Clinical trials of hypoxia-activated prodrugs, on the other hand, demonstrated no benefits.

The researchers believe this is because the solid tumors against which they were deployed were either not hypoxic or were not hypoxic enough.

Xia and Fan Zhang sought to find a way to make tumors more hypoxic so that prodrugs had a better chance of functioning.

Read also: Insomnia linked to heart attacks in new studies

The batteries

The researchers and their colleagues employed a tiny, flexible battery that could partially wrap around a tumor.

It charges itself with a zinc electrode by drawing oxygen from its environment, resulting in very reactive oxygen pairs that might damage DNA.

However, they are not a viable supply of oxygen for cells.

The tumors in the mice decreased by roughly 26% of their original size two weeks after the battery was implanted.

It may accomplish this by absorbing the vast majority of available oxygen and producing a significant number of reactive oxygen pairs.

Shrinking the tumor

When combined with a hypoxia-activated prodrug, the average tumor size was decreased by 90%.

“I think the concept, the scientific basis, is solid,” said Qin Zhang.

He also remarked that, while the findings are encouraging, they are still in their early stages.

The batteries were only used on mice and only against mouse-specific breast cancer.

“It has to be tested in several breast cancer models and also has to be tested in other cancer models,” Zhang said, referring to humans.

He also claimed that a 90% reduction in tumor size is not the same as a 100% reduction.

“There’s still 10 percent left,” he said.

If the cells survive, it might mean they are resistant to hypoxia, allowing the tumor to develop again.

Zhang added that, like many other therapies, it would need to be combined with others to ensure total tumor eradication.

Xia, Fan Zhang, and his colleagues are thinking about ways to make the battery more flexible and powerful for human-sized tumors, using battery energy to suck air and starve cancer.

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