One of the nation's top cancer centers plans to test a Washington County native's novel method of targeting cancer cells and destroying them with radio waves.

Dr. Steven Curley, professor of surgical oncology and chief of gastrointestinal tumor surgery at the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, will test a treatment protocol that John Kanzius, 61, created to be noninvasive, nontoxic and without side effects.

U.S. News and World Report ranked the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center as the nation's No. 1 cancer hospital in 2004.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has begun testing animals with Kanzius' technology. Dr. David A. Geller, co-director of UPMC's Liver Cancer Center, said he will collaborate with Curley in the testing process.

"It will be helpful to have more than one research team involved," Geller said.

In the 1990s, Curley helped to refine radio frequency ablation, a method used to kill tumors of the liver by applying a probe or needle heated with radio frequencies to the tumor.

Kanzius' technology would enhance cancer cells and make them vulnerable to heat from a radio-frequency device operated from outside the body.

"The idea that John has come up with is very novel," Curley said, "I told him I'd love to work on it and study it. He said he was very interested in us getting involved."

Having UPMC and M.D. Anderson working on the project will put his technology "on a super fast track," Kanzius said.

"This represents a medical superstar team working on this medical application," he said. "We will now know sooner rather than later what the potential of this treatment protocol will be."

Kanzius, a native of South Strabane, Washington County, graduated from Trinity Area High School in 1962, and holds an electronics degree from Allegheny Institute of Technology.

The resident of Millcreek, Erie County, owned Jet Broadcasting Inc. of Erie, which operated a string of radio and television stations. He sold his last radio station and retired in 2003 after being diagnosed with rare B-cell leukemia.

While undergoing chemotherapy, he said, the impact it had on fellow cancer patients inspired him to come up with a plan to use a nontoxic cell enhancement to render cancer cells vulnerable to radio frequencies.

Geller, who said it will take up to two years to determine the potential of Kanzius technology, began animal testing in May with a $200,000 grant that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., included in a Senate bill in December.

Curley said he will start testing Kanzius' technology on rabbits and pigs this fall.