Modifying the electrical, optical, and magnetic properties of cancer cells: A comprehensive approach for cancer management

Abstract

Despite the recent successes of cancer therapy, numerous obstacles remain. The medical community of the 16th century believed that magnets might be used to cure or prevent illness. However, this concept has only recently been put into practice in the treatment of cancer. Cancers vary greatly not only at the patient, tissue, and cellular levels but also at the molecular level. Because of this multiscale heterogeneity, effective treatments that not only differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissues but also target a wide variety of tumor subclones are difficult to develop. Most treatments either take advantage of a specific biological characteristic shared by cancer cells (e.g., their propensity for rapid division) or indiscriminately eradicate every cell in an area of interest. In this article, we review the physical, chemical, electrical, optical, and magnetic properties of cancer cells, before discussing how these properties may be modulated by current and future cancer therapies.