A loaded question Julie44....Here Goes Nothing

1) PET/CT
If you haven't noticed, cancer needs much higher levels of glucose than the average cell. Simply attaching a gold nanoparticle to a glucose binding agent would work. But there is a catch. You would have to monitor surrounding tissue for signs of damage. This could easily be done by inserting a small RTD into local tissue and monitor the temperature. When the surrounding temp gets elevated it's time to end the treatment. This would work in 65-75% of tumors and microscopic METS. It would be more difficult to treat areas of the body whose cells also require higher levels off glucose, ie, the brain, kidneys, a few others. Keep in mind these cells require 2 to 3 times the level as most cells whereas cancer cells require 20-25 times the concentration. Levels of glucose are freakishly high in cancer cells. This should make them easy pickins' . To date, I haven't been able to find a single study that tries to diminish, utilize, or exploit this chemistry. This is truly sad. There are companies that have developed nanorobots that seek out high levels of glucose and administer tiny amounts of insulin within the cell. These nanorobots have been tested and proven to be effective in treating diabetes at the cellular level. Moreover, these robots can be programmed to release their payload into a very narrow window of concentrations. This sound like the perfect delivery mechanism. I've e-mailed, phoned, and faxed all this to Dr. Curley. No Response. If they don't have have rights to it they probably aren't gonna mess with it.
2)Geometric targeting.
Gold nanoparticles can be made into different sizes and shapes. MIT has already proven that certain shapes are retained in cancer cells much longer than healthy cells. This could be approved for trials tomorrow. Radio waves are FDA approved, gold is approved. Put the two together and they should be approved. Unfortunately, there is no real money in it. It would be almost impossible to patent a profitable treatment regimen.
3)Protein-chemical Overexpression
There are several proteins that are overexpressed in cancer cells. Some are cancer type specific and some are cancer specific. I think the easiest is telomerase. It's been found to be overexpressed in almost every cancer. It's fairly active and we already have drugs that can bind to it. Simply bind a gold nanoparticle to it. This is easy chemistry. Once again very little money in it.
4)Gene specific targeting-This is what we are waiting on.
The doctor will isolate your specific cancer, build an antibody, bind it to the gold nanoparticle and inject it. The antibody will then seek out and kill only the cancer cell. Very profitable and labor intensive.

Targeting mechanisms 1-3 would be 90-100% effective in killing all cancer cells, a small percentage of healthy cells would be killed in the process. But I think the amount of healthy cells affected would be marginal in light of surgery, chemo, ablation, and death. None of these mechanisms is particularly profitable.

Mechanism 4 is more lucrative than the first 3 and is far more intricate to work out. But this will be the future.

I've read that the cancer industry is a 50 billion dollar a year business in the US alone. I think that number is higher considering all the lost labor. If you factor in the loss of revenue for 1 million people and the Social Security paid out to those folks, thats another 20 billion out. That's 90 billion going out. If we were healthy we could consider that a positive number. If we were all working at the poverty level that's +50 billion. Cancer is a 140 billion dollar drain on the economy, not to mention loss of life. I would like to present that number to Obama, and tell him this is how we help with health care reform. Some things are to big for private industry to fix, cancer is one of them. Spend 2 billion dollars, fix it and reap the benefits to the tune of 150 billion a year.