A physicist and his biologist son destroyed a common virus using a superfast pulsing laser, without harming healthy cells. The discovery could lead to new treatments for viruses like HIV that have no cure. "We have demonstrated a technique of using a laser to excite vibrations on the shield of a virus and damage it, so that it's no longer functional," said Kong-Thon Tsen, a professor of physics at Arizona State University. "We're testing it on HIV and hepatitis right now." Tsen and his son Shaw-Wei Tsen, a pathology student at Johns Hopkins University, came up with the idea while strolling in the park and discussing the need for antiviral treatments that go beyond vaccinations. Tsen senior has long experimented with ultrashort-pulse lasers (USPs), devices increasingly used outside of physics. Raydiance, a USP laser manufacturer, signed a deal with the FDA in July to explore laser therapies. As Wired News reported earlier this year, an FDA official estimated there could be a hundred medical uses for USP lasers, from common laser eye treatments to cell-by-cell tumor ablation. In the latest research, Tsen and his son demonstrated that their laser technique could shatter the protein shell, or capsid, of the tobacco mosaic virus, leaving behind only a harmless mucus-like mash of molecules. The laser shattered the capsid at low energy: 40 times lower, in fact, than the energy level that harmed human T-cells. Other types of radiation, like ultraviolet light, kill microbes on produce, but would damage human cells. The virus-deactivating laser works on a principle called forced resonance.

The scientists tune the laser to the same frequency the virus vibrates on. Then they crank up the volume. Like a high-pitched sound shattering glass, the laser vibrates the virus until it breaks. The USP laser releases energy in femtosecond pulses -- one millionth of a nanosecond -- at a time. "The extreme brevity of these pulses is creating a physical effect that traditional lasers and other types of non-laser approaches can't do," said Scott Davison, president of the venture-backed USP laser company, Raydiance.

View: Full Article | Source: Wired

wow, sounds promising...

YAAAYYY another piece of humanity-altering technology that the corporation-run government will sweep under the rug then burn said rug along with the entire room that its in.

No need to be too paranoid. This is really either something that will prove to have poor side effects when actually curing a disease or fail to destroy all cells, and thus be dropped, or it will be a huge breakthrough. Hopefully the latter, because this is very promising if it turns out to work like intended. With this we would technically only need a copy of the virus itself, which is easy to obtain.

This is great news, urban warfare in your own body I'm all for it the only problem I can think of is how can you find all the little insurgent viruses???

LET THIS ABOMINATION UPON THE LOOORRRDD COMMENCE!!!!!!

Just joking. Looks cool, I'll be watching this down the road.

just goes to show what happens if you let people think, i like the idea of father and son invention sounds heavenly, but im sure the government will buy it and dump it in the underground bunker where that ark was sent

I, for one, hope to everything holy and unholy alike that this does turn into something good. If it had come a little earlier maybe it could have saved my aunt.