The year 2014 has been an outbreak year for science, with the spread of the Ebola virus and the threat of it spreading worldwide scientist found proteins that blocks both HIV and Ebola release, also a possible cure for cancer in the form of a measles vaccine and a way to burst cancer cells using nanobubbles.

Cancer is a disease that causes millions of deaths annually, it can target many places such as the human brain(fig1), lungs, blood, stomach, liver...etc.

(Fig1: This is an x-ray image of a person with brain cancer. the white patch on the brain is the cancer infected area)

 Over the years there has been no cure found for the disease only various treatments which do not always have a beneficial result to the patients and normally use a heavy amount of radiation. However in 2014 there have been two big discoveries made which might change the path of cancer treatment forever. They are; a heavy dose of measles vaccine and a treatment using nanobubbles to burst cancer cells.

The measles vaccine was developed by "Mayo Clinic" researchers employing virotherapy destroyed a 49 year old woman's blood cancer by injecting her with extremely high levels of measles vaccine. This type of cancer is very hard to treat in the late stages that this woman had it and the two options which where normally used to try stop the development where, bone marrow transplants and radiation therapy. After both treatments failed she was injected with an extremely high concentration of a measles vaccine and within 36 hours the tumor was gone. There are many discussions on whether or not, high levels of measles can treat cancer, however one thing is for sure that experiments will proceed and hopefully the scientists will find a cure for this devastating disease. 

Furthermore even if the measles treatment fails to work there has been another study going on performed by researchers at Rice University which indicates that the cancer cells can be burst using nanobubbles. The way this procedure works is by tagging the gold nanoparticles with antibodies which help it target the chosen cancer cells. These particles then attach to the surface of the cancerous cell and are ingested and stay right under the cell’s protective membrane. Following they will be activated by infrared laser pulses; these pulses can penetrate human skin, but are not absorbed by the nanoparticles. However that is exactly what is required for this treatment to work; the light would affect the free electrons causing them to start producing access heat causing the nanobubbles to pop. Then if that does not kill the cell it is now very weak and vulnerable to other drugs. There is a similar method used currently to this one however it has a flaw. The other method uses the same concept however it heats up the golden nanoparticles and kills the cell using heat, but that is not as healthy as the heating process kills healthy cells around the area rather than the new method discovered by the Rice University does no damage to healthy cells (fig2).

(Fig2 This shows how the different rays are used to burst the cancerous cell)

Another disease that has been around for a long time is HIV. This is a sexually transmitted viral infection and in order for the virus to work it needs to hijack some of the host cells. In order to do so it goes through some processes. In order to enter the cell one of the main proteins used to help it enter the cell is the protein TMI. This protein is found with many other viruses such as the recent Ebola virus. Now researchers claim to have found a way to use the TMI protein to block the virus release which means that it would not spread. There is no cure for HIV yet however this could be the first step to its discovery.  And also it could be so that the virus could be halted before it evolves into AIDS.    

To conclude the year 2014 has been a big breakthrough for medical science, possible cures for cancer may have been found, which could result in saving millions of lives each year. Furthermore possible cure for HIV might be on the way which would mean again many lives saved. Hopefully researches will continue in the year of 2015 and these findings could be further on developed into cures that work efficiently.

Vocabulary:

Virotherapy-a therapy using a modified virus that destroys cancer cells without destroying healthy ones.

Measles -a viral disease causing red rash and fever

Ingested-Taken in to the cell