- Humans have figured out how to treat all kinds of diseases.

But countless others have eluded us, many of which are very specific to women.

Well, what if we could come after some of these tricky conditions in a new way?

Maybe we could treat things like cancer or endometriosis by cooking the cause.

Well, that's all science, no fiction.

(bright music) - This is an oxide.

- [Jes] Sometimes the most high-tech science.

- So now we are weighing the precursor.

We are synthesizing magnetic nanoparticle.

- [Jes] Requires the most low-tech of tools.

Like this Slurpee straw.

- So we use the disposable spatula, which are made from the plastic or other kind of material.

If you use metal to weigh the metal, so it cause contamination.

- [Jes] Contamination would be bad here because the nanoparticles Prem Singh has designed to destroy cancer tumors require precision to make.

And getting it right could unlock a new treatment that could change the outlook for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffering with endometriosis or ovarian cancer.

- Now that everything is inside the flask, we are going to heat the components at a high temperature.

- [Jes] Nanoparticles are tiny atomic structures that can be made from all sorts of materials.

In this flask is a boiling mix of iron and cobalt metals.

(upbeat music) - Atoms start coming together and form nuclei, and then the nucleation process starts.

And after that, after nuclear formation, it grows into nanoparticles.

So this is a bottom-up approach.

- [Jes] Basically, he's building his nanoparticles from scratch, starting with raw ingredients and a recipe of his own creation.

But just how many does his recipe produce?

Thousands?

Millions?

- Oh, it's...

I cannot count.

There might be more than that.

- To get an idea of just how small these nanoparticles are, think about a meter.

Well, there are a billion nanometers in this meter.

That's like the difference between the diameter of the earth and this gummy bear.

If you cut the head off.

(bear squeaks) (crowd gasps) - [Prem] So these are nanoparticle collected in the tube.

- [Jes] Singh has developed his nanoparticles to have many valuable properties.

For the disease-fighting effects he's going for, this is the most important.

They're magnetic.

- By applying a magnet, we can clearly see the nanoparticles are attracted to magnet.

- [Jes] And if you apply a special kind of magnetic field to the particles, they heat up.

Hot enough to cook cancer cells.

♪ If you want to get with me ♪ ♪ You got to learn how to drop ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm hot ♪ Oleh and Olena Taratula head up the lab developing these magnetic nanoparticles.

- I always wanted to help people, to treat complicated diseases, and, at the same time, I also wanted to pay attention to diseases which don't have a good treatment at this point in time.

- They found two diseases that fit the bill perfectly, ovarian cancer and endometriosis, both diseases of women and other people with uteruses that have not traditionally gotten a lot of research attention.

- I think what excites me that we developing something which could be useful in my lifetime.

(light playful music) - Hmm.

Ovarian cancer happens when tumors form in the ovaries.

Lights, please.

On a whole, only about half those diagnosed survive five years.

- Very often, ovarian cancer are called a silent killer because patients, they don't have any symptoms for a long period of time.

And, very often, when they start to have symptoms, disease already progress.

- Endometriosis, on the other hand, usually won't kill you.

But it can be super painful, debilitating even.

It happens when endometrial cells that normally live on the inside of the uterus grow in patches or lesions outside the uterus.

It'll affect one out of every 10 women.

- If you can remove it, the endometriotic lesions non-invasively, that would remove pain, it would improve, you know, fertility, and just improve the lifestyle of women.

- [Jes] The ingenious idea is to kill the problematic cancer cells.

- So first part of the therapy experiment, to check the nanoparticle efficacy in the ovarian cancer cell.

- [Jes] By infesting them with nanoparticles and then remotely turning up the heat.

♪ Oh my gosh, you're so damn hot ♪ ♪ Where did you learn to move like that?

♪ - Any human cell which experience temperature above 42, so there is a definite that this cell is going to die.

- [Jes] 42 degrees Celsius is about 108 Fahrenheit, and that's hot enough to destroy tumor cells without damaging the surrounding tissue.

The treatment works sort of like this induction stovetop.

(stovetop beeps) The burner isn't hot, it just creates an electromagnetic field that causes the metal in this pan to heat up.

The technique is called magnetic hyperthermia.

(upbeat music) Creating nanoparticles that can find their way to the targeted cells through the bloodstream while getting hot enough to kill them has been a huge innovation for the lab.

- Yeah, so this formulation is ready for the in vivo and in vitro experiment.

We put the fiber-optic temperature probe inside the sample.

And so here we can see the real-time measurement here.

I'll start the machine.

- [Jes] When Singh and fellow postdoc, Karthickraja Duraisamy, push start, the coil produces an alternating magnetic field.

- [Karthickraja] It's increasing.

- [Jes] The particle blob in the vial jumps up about 50 degrees from room temperature in a matter of seconds.

- This is 56.

So this is only 10, less than 10 seconds.

- Our goal is not to burn tissue.

Our goal is to disrupt the tissue, that the body can take care of it and eliminate it, dissolve it.

- [Jes] So far, the lab's nanoparticles have been tested in mice, and the results have been exciting.

- So you can see this is the tumor model.

So we inject the nanoparticle through intravenous route, and we check whether the nanoparticles are really accumulating in the tumor site or not.

It's delivering the nanoparticle only to the ovarian cancer cells.

- [Jes] They've been able to reduce ovarian cancer growth by a factor of seven, and they can totally eradicate endometriosis lesions.

- Even five years ago, we were not even dreaming to have nanoparticles with the properties which we have right now.

And now it seems very, very close that we can actually try it in clinical trials with humans.

- [Jes] If all goes well, those trials could start within five years.

- If the product which we develop could be used in clinics, it would be a dream, obviously, in real life.

(bright music) Just wait a second, sorry.

- [Jes] Yeah, no problem.

- Yeah, I think this would be my success.

(Oleh chuckles) - [Jes] And for the millions of women living with painful and deadly diseases, the lab's work with tiny nanoparticles provides huge hope for a healthier future.

There might not be quite as many OPB members as there are nanometers in a meter.

- Yes.

(Prakurti laughs) (machine beeps) (air whooshes) - [Jes] But every one of you is vital to the work we do at "All Science.

No Fiction."

- Sorry, I'll move it away.

(Jes laughs) - [Jes] Thanks for your ongoing support.

- What is happening here?

- Yeah, it's recording.

- [Jes] And don't miss out on any of OPB's science, environment, and arts programs by subscribing to OPB Insider at opb.org/allscience.

This is my better ovary.

- [Producer] Oh, my better one is the left one.

- [Producer] That's great.

(soft music)