SUWON, KOREA - David B. Agus (one of Steve Jobs's oncologists and a medical researcher at the University of Southern California (USC)) made an honest confession in his book titled “The End of Illness.” “I am an oncologist who cannot treat advanced cancer well,” he stated. Dr. Agus, a world-renowned cancer doctor whose career in oncology has spanned the past two decades, has begun to question mainstream Western medicine’s fundamental approaches towards health and diseases, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misperceptions. In 2009, Dr. Agus stood before thousands of colleagues at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Denver and bluntly stated, “We’ve barely budged in our “war” against cancer in the last five decades. We’ve all made a mistake, myself included, by focusing down, by reducing the study of the disease down to finite points. Despite medical advances, cancer death rates have fallen a paltry 8%.”
Dr. Agus blamed the world’s defeat in the long-fought war against cancer on the germ theory of disease that Western medicine blindly accepted throughout the course of the 20th century. According to Dr. Agus, cancer is not an infectious disease that is from without; cancer is rather from within. From the perspective of traditional Korean medicine, Dr. Agus’s assertions are nothing new. Once the balance of our body system breaks down, tumors start to self-reproduce.
There is a prominent Korean scientist who concurs with Dr. Agus. He is Dr. Jong-seo Chai, Professor for Information & Communication Eng. of Sungkyunkwan University(SKKU). In December of this year, he will to participate in a project to develop a dual head gantry radiotherapy system, which is one of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE)’s IT convergence projects. Three companies will jointly participate in this project that has been organized by Sungkyunkwan University. They are NT Research (which will be in charge of designing and manufacturing a dual head gantry radiotherapy system), RTX (in charge of developing accelerators and beam delivery modules), and IMT (responsible for designing and manufacturing gantry heads). Also, Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) is expected to spearhead marketing campaigns to successfully commercialize the finished product.
This medical equipment, slated to be finished in 2017, is based on automatic lesion detection technology. Once the development of this medical equipment is finalized, it will serve as a natural enemy of malignant tumors. Also, it is projected to slash medical treatment periods by 30%. Its dual head will also shoot beams onto cancerous lesions.
Dr. Chai said, “Cancer cells are created when aging cells, which were once healthy, refuse to die old and mutate for survival. While the inhalation of cigarette smoke kills some cells inside the body, it also forces some other cells to mutate into stronger ones to stay alive. Such mutated cells constitute cancer.” Studies on the correlations between rapid population graying and the outbreak of disease show that cancer incidence rates picked up by 20% - 30% among people over 70 and by over 30% among people over 80. Dr. Chai added, “Such mutated cells cannot live in harmony with other cells. They monopolize nutrients and disturb the working of other nerves. As a result, the supply of blood and oxygen can be cut off, thereby killing the person.
Radiotherapy that replaces chemotherapy and surgery
As of now, there are three cancer treatments available: chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy means destroying cancerous cells with poison. Once anti-cancer drugs get into a cancer patient’s body, the patient on chemotherapy has to wait until the healthy regions damaged by chemotherapy recover before he receives another shot of anti-cancer medication. Thus, it takes a long time and the body will take a knock as a result. There are limits to cancer surgery, too. Some cancerous areas are hard to remove via surgery. Thus, long, painful hours of operations are required to rid the body of them. That’s why surgery is not even considered as an option for elderly cancer patients.
Then comes radiotherapy. Dr. Chai will develop medical equipment for radiotherapy. He explained, “There have been misunderstandings about radiotherapy. because radiotherapy has been put to use on the sidelines of surgery and chemotherapy. So many people have feared the side effects from this treatment. The dual-head gantry radiotherapy treatment system we have envisioned will be geared to attack a specific area, so the cancer patient will feel no pain and potential negative impact on the body will be minimized.”
New radiotherapy destroys only cancerous cells
As a matter of fact, radiotherapy has a longer history than the general public might think. In 1896, a year after German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, X-rays were adopted for diagnosis. A decade later, in 1905, X-rays were used for medical treatment. As of now, various methods including X-rays, gamma rays, protons, and carbon treatments are being used.
In the past, there were actually many side effects: non-cancerous areas were also impaired by radiotherapy. However, thanks to the advancement of medical imaging equipment, cancerous cells can be detected and closely tracked. As a result, the rates of side effects from radiotherapy can be reduced to less than 30%. When this occurs, healthy, cancer-free areas of the body will not fall victim to the fallout from radiotherapy.
In contrast to treatments using gamma rays and X-rays that cannot be directed onto cancerous areas without affecting their non-cancerous, surrounding areas, protons and carbon treatments are able to precisely direct beams onto the target area. Yet, as proton treatment equipment currently costs about KRW 150 billion – KRW 200 billion, not many Korean cancer patients can afford to undergo proton treatment. In Korea, the National Cancer Center is the only Korean institution that runs a proton treatment center.
The commercialization of the first Korean-made radiotherapy equipment is slated for 2018
Up until now, there has been no Korean-made radiotherapy equipment whatsoever. Once the team led by Dr. Chai completes the development of the dual head gantry radiotherapy system, it will mark the first radiotherapy equipment developed by Koreans. In fact, the idea of developing radiotherapy equipment has been initially shrugged off in Korea because the public’s awareness of radiotherapy was quite low. Dr. Chai mentioned, “While only 20% to 30% of Korean cancer patients opt for radiotherapy, over 60% receive radiotherapy in the US. Once a dual head gantry radiotherapy system is developed, cancer patients will have medical treatments at a more affordable price, and the treatment of early-stage cancer patients will also be possible.”
Tomo Therapy, radiotherapy equipment developed by Japan’s Mitsubishi, is soon to be released. Moto Therapy, which is somewhat similar to what the team led by Dr. Chai plans to develop, will cost USD 6 million to 7 million. The dual head gantry radiotherapy system envisaged by Dr. Chai’s team will be cheaper than Tomo Therapy and be capable of effectively tracking down cancer cells. The reason why Dr. Chai’s team is confident about the outcome of their project is because the team has already obtained key technologies needed for linier accelerators for radiation therapy. Besides, since the participating three companies (NT Research (robots), RTX (accelerator systems), and IMT (smart image-guided therapy technologies) boast expertise in different fields, synergetic effects are expected when they join forces. Dr. Chai’s team will set about creating a project to develop an affordable dual head gantry radiotherapy system that will prove to be 1.5 times more effective than the existing products. The commercialization of this medical equipment is estimated to occur in 2018.
