Florida Man's Cancer Treatment Idea Looks Promising

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- More than 1.3 million people will get cancer this year, and 570,000 will die from it.

A Florida man with no medical training whatsoever may be on the right track.

John Kanzius and his wife, Marianne, retired to Sanibel Island in 2002, but any thoughts of a relaxing retirement were postponed six months later, when Kanzius was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.

While undergoing chemotherapy, he endured a lot of sleepless nights.

"There's nothing good about today's modern treatment for cancer," said Kanzius.

He was 58 when he was diagnosed and decided he would fight the good fight, but felt he had lived a full life.

What disturbed him was watching young cancer patients struggle.

"You could see the life go out of their bodies," he said.

It was during this period of prolonged insomnia that the former broadcasting executive had a new mission.

While he wasn't naive enough to think he could cure cancer, he felt maybe something in his engineering background would come in handy.

As a former owner of radio and television stations, Kanzius had a lot of electronic equipment around the house.

"I began one night trying to see if I could transmit high energy waves through a short space," he said.

Kanzius told his friend, Dr. Robert McDonald, of Southwest Florida Regional Medical center, about cutting up his wife's pie pans to help send radio waves from point "A" to point "B."

"He said he was able to cook hot dogs using this, and I was blown away," said McDonald.

Kanzius continued to fine tune his work to see if the radio waves could be targeted to attack specific cells.

Kanzius discovered that neighboring cells were unaffected. He now now holds seven patents on his technology.

In recent months, Kanzius' work has gotten the attention of some very important researchers who believe he's on to something big.

At the University of Pittsbrugh Medical Center, the first Kanzius protoype is being used by Dr. David Geller.

Geller is testing the radio-wave theory on lab rats with tumors.

"I think this has potential to be cutting-edge technology; it's certainly novel," said Geller. "There's nothing out there like it."

UPMC isn't the only place working with Kanzius' invention.

Dr. Steven Curley is a program director at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, where Kanzius underwent treatment.

"Current radio frequency treatment require literally sticking a needle or needles into tumors and turning on an electrical current that will heat the tumor slowly," said Curley.

Curley sees two major advantages to the invention.

"First, it's external and non-invasive -- no needles placed in the tumor or the body. Second, it would allow us to treat tumors much more rapidly than current equipment allows us to use," he said. "The ability to non-invasively treatment somebody is truly the holy grail of cancer."

Curley's team has ordered two of Kanzius' prototypes to begin testing on pigs and rabbits, and if the data lines up, tests could begin on humans within two years, pending FDA approval.

Kanzius says what's been amazing is that the medical field has come to him and he hasn't had to beg for funding from Washington.

Diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter spearheaded a $200,000 grant to test Kanzius' invention.

"This new idea for treating cancer sounds innovative and very, very promising," said Specter.

Kanzius says the momentum from his idea has snowballed and is now a full-fledged avalanche.

He's just trying to keep an even keel, as he stands on the brink of what could be one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of modern times.

"To think that two to three years from now, I might be able to watch somebody that's been treated and have a doctor say to that person, 'You've been cured' -- that would be all I'm looking for," said Kanzius.

The team at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center should have some preliminary data on Kanzius' work within the next few weeks.

As for his own health, Kanzius says his cancer is in remission.