Red lights enhance the drug absorption capacity of the cancer cells, says a recent study by Andrei Sommer at the University of Ulm, Germany.

Cancer treatment for years has been using chemotherapy to treat cancer. But it could not always give the expected success rate. The effectiveness of the chemotherapy treatment largely depended upon the cell absorption of chemotherapy drugs.

Scientists around the world have been trying various methods to improve drug absorption of the cancer cells and through it the efficiency of cancer treatment. Till now doctors were using diffusion technique for drug absorption in chemo therapy. It does not give 100 percent success rate because of the cells tendency to flush out foreign particles. But, this new finding will help improve the effectiveness of cancer treatment and the development of new drugs.

Sommer and his team came out with this finding after testing it on human cervical cancer cells. They have administered cancer drug epigallocatechin (EGCG) and exposed the cells to red lights for about 1 minute.

Red laser light’s wavelength reduces the water density and it causes the water to flow quickly out of the cell. But, when the light is switched off, water regains its density making the cell absorb water and other particles around, including the drug. This way the cells exposed to red light caused degeneration of 70 percent of the cancer cells. In the normal light the cancer cell degeneration was only 30 percent.