When he spoke at an international conference on nanotechnology this year, India’s president praised the University of Missouri-Columbia for making discoveries that could transform the treatment of cancer. Countries throughout the world should follow MU’s example, he said, by supporting a new field of science with seemingly limitless applications.

Medicine, microchips, fuels and textiles could change radically through further development of nanotechnology. Nanoscientists build and test particles at the nearly unimaginable scale of a nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. For instance, gold nanoparticles created at MU are more than 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The inventor of the particles, Kattesh Katti, PhD, is exploring how they could help detect prostate cancer. In March, he was joined by world-renowned cancer researcher and fellow radiology professor Frederick Hawthorne, PhD.

“It is the opportunity of a lifetime to attract someone who has contributed so immensely to this field and is considered a world authority with more than four decades of experience,” Katti said of Hawthorne. “There is a synergy that will happen instantly.”

MU is investing millions of dollars to help Hawthorne develop a new International Institute for Nano and Molecular Medicine at MU. Five other MU faculty members in radiology, hematology and oncology are members, and the institute is in the process of recruiting others. Laboratories for them will be located in a new building scheduled to open in November 2007. The approximately $10 million structure will serve as a base of operation for uniting a variety of MU researchers and resources.

“I still marvel at what I found at the University of Missouri-Columbia that I have never encountered anywhere else in the world,” Hawthorne said. “The campus literally has everything including a nuclear research reactor, a medical school, a veterinary medicine school and sincere people who are interested in collaborating with me. I realized Mizzou would be a place where I could fulfill my life's work, which is to find a new route for attacking cancer in a definitive way.”

A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1973, Hawthorne previously served more than 35 years on the faculty at the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1998 he was appointed University Professor of Chemistry, the most distinguished title bestowed on faculty by the Regents of the University of California. He served as editor-and-chief of the most cited journal in his field, Inorganic Chemistry, from 1969 to 2000, and he was a co-winner of the prestigious King Faisal International Prize for Science in 2003 for achievements that will have a profound effect on cancer therapy.

Upon learning of Dr. Hawthorne’s recruitment to MU, Robert Grubbs, PhD, 2005 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said: “I have been following Fred Hawthorne’s work for 20 years and watching it develop into something that can ultimately cure significant diseases. It seems that MU has set up a perfect place for him to pursue his dreams.”

Boron’s unique properties and potential for medicine have consumed Hawthorne’s career. He is particularly interested in the element’s similarity to carbon, which allows boron to form a nearly infinite number of compounds by combining with itself, carbon and other elements. But unlike the carbon compounds that form the basis of organic chemistry, Hawthorne’s boron compounds remain stable and impervious to degradation in the presence of enzymes.

“Boron may be employed across the wide spectrum of biomedicine in much the same way as organic compounds, but boron offers totally new biomedical applications,” Hawthorne said. “Some of the most notable applications I am developing include new agents that could greatly enhance radioimaging and radiotherapy, new drug delivery systems, and boron neutron capture therapy for treating cancer.”

Boron neutron capture therapy uses the Boron-10 isotope placed in non-toxic compounds that specifically target cancer cells. The marked cancer cells are then destroyed by exposure to a neutron field. Neutrons don't harm the biological components of tissue, but they produce a localized and highly energetic reaction with Boron 10. The boron-neutron reaction is only as large as the cell in which it occurs, and the reaction can be turned on and off by removing the neutron source.

“Developing boron neutron capture therapy requires a nuclear reactor, and in my opinion MU has the finest research reactor in the world,” Hawthorne said.