In our latest FastForward Radio show I said "Nanotech is one of these things that you have to be up-to-the-minute on. Everyday is something new in this field you have to watch for."

Well, to prove that, here's one development that was announced the day of our show - cancer-killing "Biofunctionalized magnetic-vortex microdiscs." These 60 nanometer metallic discs are paired with biological molecules that apparently help the discs find the cancer. When a magnetic field is applied, the disc spin oscillates. This assaults the cancer cell in an entirely new way - not by heat or mechanically, but electrically.

We [the research team] show that the spin-vortex-mediated stimulus creates two dramatic effects: compromised integrity of the cellular membrane, and initiation of programmed cell death. A low-frequency field of a few tens of hertz applied for only ten minutes was sufficient to achieve 90% cancer-cell destruction in vitro.

The fact that the magnetic field required is "low-frequency" is important. The idea of using magnetic fields to kill cancer is not new to this team. But in the past the frequency required to kill cancer caused problems with nearby healthy tissue.