IQ-heavy nanoparticle fans working out of Georgia Tech have come up with a new strategy to deal with pesky cancer cells.

Here's a robust simplification of the process: the researches get magnetic nanoparticles to attach themselves to free-floating cancer cells within an animal's body, and then after this is done, they can use regular magnets to collect the cancer cells together under the skin, in preparation for removal.

As many scientifitc discoveries are, this one was a bit of a serendipity. The researchers were initially trying to remove viral information from biological entities, when it dawned on smart-guy professor John Zhang that this method may work well for cancer removal.

This method seems to hold promise, and is only currently now in the initial stages of investigation. One good thing about this method is the mechanical nature of the treatment: not having to worry about the side-effects of cancer-fighting drugs or radiation treatment is fantastic.

"If you modify the nanoparticle and target it directly to the tumor cells using a small peptide, you are less likely to generate an undesirable immune response and more accurately target the cells of interest,”  scientist Erin Dickerson was quoted as saying, by Georgia Tech.