Skip to Content

A Shining New Therapy

November 1, 1998

Lung cancer continues to be a deadly killer. But a pair of medical technology firms, Xillix Technologies of Richmond, British Columbia, and Miravant Medical Technologies of Santa Barbara, Calif., are hoping to join two newly developed technologies that could offer a far more efficient way of catching lung cancer early and destroying it.

Xillix’ contribution is an imaging device, called LIFE-lung, that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1996. The technology uses certain wavelengths of laser light to illuminate the organ; cancerous (and even precancerous) tissues fluoresce in reddish hues. Miravant is one of several companies working on photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treating lung cancer. This technique involves injecting the patient with a photosensitive drug that concentrates in cancerous tissues; when activated by red laser light, the drug destroys these cells.

In clinical trials, PDT technology has proved promising. But one drawback has been that physicians aiming the laser are, in effect, shooting in the dark. The hope is that LIFE-lung would enable the oncologist to aim the laser at the drug-drenched cancer cells far more accurately by illuminating the cancer’s contours.

The combined technology may not win the war against lung cancer, but it may shed light on a promising new strategy.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.

New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.

Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.

GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why

We got a first look at the much-anticipated big new language model from OpenAI. But this time how it works is even more deeply under wraps.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.