"Cancer Songs" Follow Up

In my last post, I talked about Cancer Songs, and shared one of my favorites. I think music is really important to many of us. It can inspire us, help us move forward, and affect our emotions in positive ways.

A few days ago, I came across an article that adds another reason for thinking about the benefits of music for cancer patients.

The article is called "Thunderstruck": Plasma-Polymer-Coated Porous Silicon Microparticles as a Controlled Drug Delivery System." It was published in 2016 in the American Chemical Society Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Now, oncology research is barely my thing (I'm not a doctor or researcher), so applied materials research is kind of out there for me. But here's what I'm getting:

Researchers tried to coat a chemotherapy drug (Camptothecin, used in colon cancer treatments) with biodegradable porous silicone microparticles. the idea was that by coating the chemo particles, they would break down more slowly, making them available in the body for a longer time, so they would be able to kill more cancer cells. (Kind of like how some "slow release" pain killers have a coating on them to they break down more slowly and give you pain relief for a longer time).

The problem was, the method they used to coat the chemo particles was only coating half of them.

So they played music. Specifically, they played AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." The distortion from the guitar amps, or the heavy drum beats, or the lead simnger's voice -- something made the particles vibrate and jump around enough to coat them more completely. They found the better-coated chemo particles resulted in a "significant" time delay in cell death. The chemo did its job over a longer time.

First of all, I love that the researchers called their article "Thunderstruck." Good for them for having some fun.

Second, when I was a much younger person, I listened to more AC/DC than I could measure. Maybe I shouldn't have stopped? Something else to blame my cancer on -- a distinct lack of Brian Johnson and Angus Young in my life. All I have to show for it is some hearing loss.

Of course, that's not what they were claiming here. This was an in vitro study -- all of it measured in a test tube, not a real person. And even then, it wasn't the music that was being tested directly.

So for now, listening to any particular music won't kill your cancer cells.

But it can bring back some nice memories.