HOT NANOPROBES SLOW MICE TUMORS: In experiments with laboratory mice that bear aggressive human breast cancers, UC Davis researchers used hot nanoprobes to slow the growth of tumors — without damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

The research team describes its work in this month's issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

The lead author, Sally DeNardo, a professor of internal medicine and radiology, and co-director of the Radiodiagnosis and Therapy Program, said using heat to kill cancer cells is not a new concept, but that the therapy presents problems in how to apply it to the tumor alone, how to predict the amount needed and how to determine its effectiveness.

By combining nanotechnology, focused magnetic therapy and quantitative molecular imaging techniques, "we have developed a safer technique that could join other modalities as a treatment for breast and other cancers," DeNardo said. The next step is testing in people.

The system uses bioprobes created by wedding magnetized iron-oxide nanospheres to radiolabeled monoclonal antibodies. The researchers infused the test mice with trillions of the probes, and they latched onto malignant cells.

Three days later, the team applied an alternating magnetic field to the tumor region, causing the magnetic nanospheres to change polarity thousands of times per second, instantaneously generating heat.

-- Claudia Morain, UC Davis Health System

METH USE BOOST HEART FAILURE RISK: Young people who use methamphetamine more than triple their risk of cardiomyopathy, according to a study led by Khung-Keong Yeo, a clinical fellow in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the UC Davis Health System. He did the research while he was a medical resident at the University of Hawaii.

Yeo's team reviewed the medical records of 107 patients ages 45 and under who were diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a disease of the muscular tissue of the heart known as the myocardium. People with cardiomyopathy are at risk for heart failure and arrhythmia, a condition in which the heartbeat is abnormal, as well as sudden cardiac death.

The study appeared in the February issue of the American Journal of Medicine.

-- David Ong, UC Davis Health System