Researchers are working on a revolutionary new device that could be implanted directly into cancer patients to deliver constant immunotherapy treatment without lengthy hospital stays. The project, led by researchers from Rice University, just received a $45 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a new agency established last year.
The project and team are named “THOR,” an acronym for “targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation.” Their new implant, a “hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator,” goes by the shorthand “HAMMR.” Although the THOR team is still in the early stages of development, they are optimistic that HAMMR could be tested on humans within a few years.
The HAMMR device, which researchers describe as “smaller than a crayon or human finger,” would be implanted directly into patients via a minimally invasive procedure. Once in, it continuously monitors a patient’s cancer and actively adjusts medication disbursement “in real-time.”
Dr. Amir Jazaeri, one of the THOR researchers, says he believes HAMMR “could transform the status quo by providing real-time data from the tumor environment that can in turn guide more effective and tumor-informed novel therapies.”
“Cancer cells are continually evolving and adapting to therapy,” Jazaeri explains. “Currently available diagnostic tools, including radiologic tests, blood assays and biopsies, provide very infrequent and limited snapshots of this dynamic process.”
But the THOR team is hopeful that the HAMMR implant can radically improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments by changing what amount and type of medication patients are given based on how the cancer cells are mutating. Moreover, it should be able to do so without requiring patients to be hooked up to hospital beds for significant periods of time.
The treatment method is referred to in the medical community as “closed loop therapy.” Although the technology involved in the HAMMR implant is significantly more complex, the concept is the same as glucose monitors for diabetics. In that case, the monitor wirelessly communicates with a pump to dispense insulin as needed. This replaces the burdensome process of diabetics having to check their blood sugar levels every few hours.
The THOR team is hopeful that in addition to improving cancer patients’ quality of life, HAMMR will also decrease cancer mortality rates. Because the current process for diagnosing cancer and developing a treatment plan is lengthy, many cancers have time to grow and spread. With the HAMMR implant, doctors could potentially begin dispensing life-saving medication in a fraction of the time most treatments take to begin.
Another major benefit of the HAMMR implant is that it allows patients to avoid painful and potentially dangerous surgeries and radiation treatments. Patients would be able to live almost normal lives as they are treating their cancer.
The first clinical trials for the HAMMR implant will focus on ovarian cancer, which often goes undetected until it has spread and is more difficult to treat. On average, more than 10,000 women die every year from ovarian cancer.
The THOR team also believes that their HAMMR implant will be effective against cancers that affect the pancreas, liver, lungs, and other organs.
With $45 million in fresh funding, researchers are optimistic that human trials could begin within a few years. Overall, the THOR team has said that the HAMMR implant could slash U.S. cancer deaths by 50 percent.
In an era of deep partisan divisions, the mission to fight cancer has been one of the few eras of bipartisan cooperation. Although President Biden has been roundly criticized for his false statements that he “ended cancer as we know it,” his administration has worked with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to help provide funding for researchers like the THOR team. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which provided the $45 million grant to the THOR team, was created last year with the support of Congress and the White House.
The HAMMR implant could mean a dramatic reduction in cancer deaths within just the next few years. Amid all the negative storylines dominating mainstream media coverage, this is one to celebrate.
Good news, and the sooner the better. I have several friends and family members that could use it now if it were available. Cancer has become the modern day plague in our society.
Research such as this should be getting our tax dollars, not equity oyster bars, and 8 million dollar studies on whether or not to remove a barge from a local river in Democratic Representative AOC’s district or for million dollar sidewalks in Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler’s district…I could go on, but you get the drift. There’s a lot of wasted tax dollars on crap. We should be spending it on worth while endeavors such as the HAMMR implants.
It will never be finalized because of greed from the medical profession and the drug companies! There is just to much money made from cancer patients
Sounds great, but too bad not quickly available enough to help many of us advanced aged seniors! But I’m sure this disappoints many so-called Democrats that so many Conservatives will suffer the consequences of shortened life spans!
Hope this can come to be and help millions of people with cancer.
The reason ole Joe said he cured cancer is aggrandizing himself. Everything he has done has failed and blames the failures on extreme Magas. I wish he would say who these people are. Not lump them all together like H does and calls them a cult that needs to be deprogrammed. H and ole Joe would benefit of such a program it would save America.
Give it government funding and we’ll get that success rate down to 40%!
Good news but it is a long way to completion.
I would like to be optimistic but the word could stops me Will would make me hopeful
Man oh man. I’ve gone from having regular health insurance and seeing a real doctor to aging into medicare where I now see a seemingly clueless Nurse Practioner and now I am supposed to be gleeful that if I get REALLY ill I wont see anyone at all other than some implant tech who for all I know will come to my door like a TV repairman used to, install this wonder device and if problems develop I guess I will see the coroner, though my input will be modest at best.
Change is not always for the better. MAYBE this time will be different huh?
All of this breaks my heart. The real enemy is greed and censorship. Ivermectin fenbendazole doxycycline have been hidden from you and it’s discovered that anti fungal meds are stopping childhood leukemia in it’s tracks. Research on NIH and know every jab from birth to those yearly flu shots are mixed grab bags cocktails of every disease created.
There wouldn’t be so many cancer deaths if cancer wasn’t so lucrative for the drugs people are put on, and the surgery too. Also, if companies weren’t given the green light to put all the deadly, cancer-causing agents into the soil, the air, the water, the foods and even the meds that people are given every day there wouldn’t be the amount of cancer. All of the processed foods loaded with words that can’t even be pronounced. Very few “clean” foods. Full of sugar, sugar, sugar – one of the biggest cancer-causing agents, Synthetic foods – made for the money they bring in. Obesity?? Read the labels on the foods – anything ‘natural’ in there?
It sounds like this is just an idea. Guess we’ll wait and see.
By the way; why don’t they tell people to get rid of their parasites, which is the major cause of most, if not all, cancers Fasting and deworming does wonders. I wonder why. Why would they possibly not want us to be cancer free. Think sbout it. Your Government loves you, remember?
This is a joke. They will do anything to put devices into our body to track us, yet make us think it’s for our own good. God made us perfect and the body was not created to have devices in it. There are cures for cancer; but every person who develops those cures disappears or is sadly eliminated. Think what that would do to the medical industry if people knew sbout them, what a shame.They give us cancer and then prevent us from getting cured. They don’t heal us; they only put bandaids on us. We have to keep the medical industry in business until we die from their drugs.
I am a member of AMAC