John Kanzius

Probably some of you don't know this, but I work for a little Dallas-based biotech company that's developing a treatment for a particular type of cancer: chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. That's one reason why one particular person's death a couple of weeks ago grabbed my attention.

John Kanzius, a CLL patient himself, had a great idea that's leading to one of the exciting developments in cancer treatment. It was indeed a great idea in itself, but it led to a pretty interesting and purely unintentional discovery:



Pre-clinical studies at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Pittsburgh are evaluating the safety and effectiveness of his cancer-fighting technology. Like all developing therapeutics, it'll take a little while, maybe five years, before we can even test this type of thing in humans. Then it'll take several more years for it to carve a path towards FDA approval. But at least it's in the works, and what better place for it to be tested than at M.D. Anderson?

As for his salt water discovery, the results have been confirmed by researchers at Penn State. Apparently, radio waves react with the water in such a way that the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and then are re-joined, releasing energy. It still has a long way to go, though. It's said that, currently, this process couldn't be used as a practical energy source, because it takes far more energy to produce the radio waves than the energy produced by the reaction. Work continues.

On Feb. 18, 2009, John Kanzius died of pneumonia resulting from complications of chemotherapy treatment for his CLL. But his ideas continue to live on and flourish.