Physicist Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green Uses Nonprofit to Raise Funds for Cancer-Killing Technology
'She told us she had 'woman's cancer,' which usually means cervical or ovarian cancer, and was only given three months to live,' Dr. Green recalled. 'She also said she'd rather die than experience the side effects of chemo or radiation treatments.' As Dr. Green nursed her aunt through the ravages of the disease, she remembers thinking, 'We have satellites in outer space that can tell whether a dime on the ground is face up or face down, but we can't treat a tumor just at the site of the tumor? That doesn't make sense.'
Three months after her aunt died, Dr. Green's uncle, her late aunt's husband, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and given up to six months to live. Dr. Green was the primary caregiver for her uncle while he received the conventional treatments of radiation and chemo. Although with treatment, Dr. Green's help, and God's grace, her uncle lived 10 years past his original prognosis, Dr. Green saw his body bear the brunt of the treatment's brutal side effects.
'I watched him wither down to nothing after losing 150 pounds,' Dr. Green said. 'He lost all of his hair on his head, his eyebrows, and his eyelashes, and his skin looked like it had been barbequed.' Seeing her aunt and uncle suffer at the hands of cancer and cancer treatments inspired Dr. Green to dedicate her life to developing innovative and more humane ways to attack and destroy cancer. In 2005, she enrolled in the physics Ph.D. program at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) to develop this inspired cancer treatment using lasers and nanotechnology.
A cure without sufferingCancer has impacted most of us. While cancer that is detected early has a high cure rate, nearly 10 million people still die from cancer each year worldwide. Even with the best care, any of us – our family, friends, or colleagues – can be subjected to ineffective treatments, harsh side effects, lengthy treatment durations, prohibitive costs, and limited accessibility. Now, there's a better way!
Dr. Green developed a novel cancer-killing technology, Laser-Activated NanoTherapy (LANT), that is of high clinical relevance in the field of oncology. LANT directly addresses the urgent yet unmet global need for more effective treatment options for millions of people with difficult-to-treat cancers. LANT is designed as a minimally invasive, curative treatment for solid tumors that induces site-specific (not cell type-specific) cellular death and tumor regression precisely at the site of laser activation. The peer-reviewed, preclinical in vivo LANT data showed complete tumor regression with clear tumor margins and healed skin in just 15 days after a single, 10-minute treatment without surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or observed side effects. Because its mechanism of action is based on physics instead of biology, LANT is a platform therapy designed to have clinical indications for a variety of difficult-to-treat solid tumors, such as brain, pancreatic, breast, prostate, and head and neck cancers.
Dr. Green founded the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, a cancer nonprofit, to keep the technology she developed affordable for all. The Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation is on a mission to change the way cancer is treated and reduce cancer patient suffering by providing a treatment that is accessible, affordable and effective. Limited by funding, not technological advancements, the Ora Lee Foundation is ready to move LANT beyond the laboratory and into humans with tax-deductible donations. When you support the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, your donations will help ensure Dr. Green's research comes to life by helping to fund human clinical trials, taking this tech from the lab to the living.
The future of cancer researchDr. Green acknowledges that none of us are islands; we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. As such, she pays it forward by creating opportunities in her research laboratory and nonprofit for women and students in STEM to grow their research and personal skills. She also advises her mentees and trainees on educational, career, and life strategies.
'My advice to young women interested in pursuing research careers would be to excel in your coursework and obtain summer and work-study research experiences to help confirm or narrow your scientific interests,' Dr. Green said. 'Put your best into everything that you do, so that when opportunities come, you will be prepared. Everyone has a divine purpose for being on the planet. Channel your joy or pain and the things that make you happy or angry, into your purpose or to help you identify your purpose.'
Dr. Green says, 'I turned my pain into passion and used the loss of my loved ones to cancer to develop new ways to fight cancer. I also channeled the skills I built as the president of different organizations in college into my position as the founder of my nonprofit.' If you haven't found your purpose, Dr. Green recommends supporting something or someone you believe in, and by dedicating time and effort to something bigger than yourself, you will gain experience and skills that may be the investment needed to achieve your own success.
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