The scientific community has made great efforts in advancing magnetic hyperthermia for the last two decades after going through a sizeable research lapse from its establishment. All the progress made in various topics ranging from nanoparticle synthesis to biocompatibilization and in vivo testing have been seeking to push the forefront towards some new clinical trials. As many, they did not go at the expected pace. Today, fruitful international cooperation and the wisdom gain after a careful analysis of the lessons learned from seminal clinical trials allow us to have a future with better guarantees for a more definitive takeoff of this genuine nanotherapy against cancer. Deliberately giving prominence to a number of critical aspects, this opinion review offers a blend of state-of-the-art hints and glimpses into the future of the therapy, considering the expected evolution of science and technology behind magnetic hyperthermia.

We present measurements of the total elastic and resonant charge-exchange ion-atom collision rate coefficient jtia of cold sodium (Na) with optically dark low-energy Na+ ions in a hybrid ion-neutral trap. To determine ka, we measured the trap loading and loss rates from both a Na magneto-optical trap (MOT) and a linear radio-frequency quadra pole Paul trap. We found the total rate coefficient to be 7.4 ± 1.9 x 10~8 cm3/s for the type-I Na MOT immersed within an «140-K ion cloud and 1.10 ± 0.25 x 10"7 cm3/s for the type-II Na MOT within an « 1070-K ion cloud. Our measurements show excellent agreement with previously reported theoretical fully quantal ah initio calculations. In the process of determining the total rate coefficient, we demonstrate that a MOT can be used to probe an optically dark ion cloud's spatial distribution within a hybrid trap.

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A hybrid ion-neutral trap provides an ideal system to study collisional dynamics between ions and neutral atoms. This system provides a general cooling method that can be applied to species that do not have optically accessible transitions, and can also potentially cool internal degrees of freedom. The long range polarization potentials (V ∝ −α/r 4 ) between ions and neutrals result in large scattering cross sections at cold temperatures, making the hybrid trap a favorable system for efficient sympathetic cooling of ions by collisions with neutral atoms. We present experimental evidence of sympathetic cooling of trapped Na + ions, which are closed shell and therefore do not have a laser induced atomic transition from the ground state, by equal mass cold Na atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT).