The problem with treating people with terminal cancer is not that doctors cannot kill the cancer but rather doing so needs high radiation doses that can also kill the patient.
Marco Durante from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy, however, suggested a solution that may potentially cure half of cancer patients: put patients into hibernation while their tumors are being killed using radiotherapy.
Humans Can Hibernate
Research suggests that most animals including humans have the ability to hibernate. Scientists, for instance, have induced hibernation in rats and there have been instances when people appear to have entered hibernation, during which they experienced a dramatic drop in temperature. Their metabolism also slowed down to the extent they can survive for a longer time without oxygen. Some seem to be unharmed by the experience.
Anna Bagenholm, a Swedish radiologist, fell into and remained in a hole in ice for more than one hour with her body temperature falling to 13.7 degrees Celsius. She suffered from a slight amount of nerve injury but made a complete recovery.
A 13-month-old toddler wearing only a nappy ventured outside in sub-zero conditions and was considered clinically dead when she was found. Doctors were not able to detect recordable heartbeat but the child returned to normal with no signs of serious damage after being placed under a warming blanket. Doctors suggested she may have entered a hibernation-like state.
Hibernation To Help Treat Cancer
Scientists think that placing the body in a resting state improves its ability to repair DNA damage.
During hibernation, a form of cold temperature deep sleep, body functions such as metabolism, heart and respiration rate, and oxygen uptake all slow down. Molecular level activities such as protein synthesis and gene activity slow down as well.
Durante said that hibernation may potentially offer hope for thousands of cancer patients with terminal cancer.
About half of cancer patients have advanced cancer and there is nothing that can be done with them as they have multiple metastasis in their body. Durante said that doctors cannot treat all metastases since it is not possible to use surgery everywhere to eliminate the cancer or use radiation in all the affected parts.
Such an aggressive treatment will kill the patient. Putting the patient into synthetic hibernation though may stop the cancer from growing, giving oncologists more time.
"You also increase radioresistance. So you can treat all the different metastases without killing the patient," Durante said. "You wake up the patients and they are cured. That is our ambition."
Scientists have found that when the body enters a state of torpor, it is significantly protected from the toxic effects of radiotherapy and even stops tumors from growing. With this, oncologists may be able to use higher doses of radiation to kill cancer cells sans harming the patient. The approach may potentially help thousands whose conditions appear to be no longer treatable.
Researchers have successfully tried the process in rats and are now on the stage of planning to conduct tests on humans with the hope that the treatment would be available within a decade. The plan is to place cancer patients into deep sleep for around a week, long enough to give time for medics to kill their tumors using radiotherapy.
