POWERFUL PLASMA, THE HOPE OF CLEANING OUT CANCER

Beside the familiar solid, liquid and gas, matter has a fourth state: plasma, an immensely hot state of matter where electron is stripped from gas atoms. Very hot flames and lighting are made up of plasma, as are the sun and the stars. Here on earth, the field of plasma physics march forward, Marc Ramsey a PhD  research student has created a small device that creates plasma that can be studied, with results that can extrapolated to the larger scale. Cold plasma is another area of study, particularly for medical applications are created by trapping and cooling neutral atoms and then ionizing the atoms.

Fig1: Plasma Production Courtesy: Ph.D. Marc Ramsey THE LAB mechanical engineering graduate laboratory, Vanderbilt University, Nashville

Scientist at the Plasma and laser engineering institute at Old Dominion University have found that cold plasma kills cancer cell from leukemia sufferers. These streams of ionized gas are thought to trigger a self-destruct mechanism in the cancerous cells while the healthy cells remains unscathed said Mounir Laroussi, who directs the Institute. He and his researchers believe it may be possible to develop a dialysis-style treatment where the blood leukemia patient is passed through the low- temperature cancer cells.

Fig2: Plasma appears inside a common plasma lamp; the matter has many potential applications in physics and astrophysics

Leukemia is the most common childhood malignancy and accounts for approximately one out of every three cancer in children, he said. The researchers expose leukemia cells to a four-minute blast plasma. The cell died around 12hours after being treated.

Fig 3: Ph.D. Marc Ramsey’s cut out section of the high-energy-density plasma for study

Many researchers thick cold plasma produces highly reactive molecules that interact with the cells and that as the cancer cell takes up more cell up, more molecules from the blood than healthy cells, they will be more affected by the plasma than will healthy cells and will die. Cancer cell multiply rapidly and are much more likely to take up the molecules generated by the plasma.