14 DAY TRIAL // Biomedical scientists at the Brown University announce the development of a new implant that may reduce the risk of breast cancer relapse in women who've overcome the disease once. If this approach works, it would help prevent a large number of unnecessary deaths among women.
Official statistics estimate that as many as 1 in 8 women in the United States will go on to develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. But the new device, which features nanoscale structures implanted directly in the healthy tissue, may lead to a significant decrease in that rate, Science Blog reports.
“We’ve created an (implant) surface with features that can at least decrease (cancerous) cell functions without having to use chemotherapeutics, radiation, or other processes to kill cancer cells,” study researcher Thomas Webster explains.
The 23-nanometer-tall peaks in the polymer material prevent malignant breast cancer cells from accumulating nutrients from their surroundings, essentially starving them to death.