A Nobel laureate who has leukemia has joined an all-star team of researchers testing a Washington County native's novel cancer treatment.

John Kanzius, 61, of Millcreek, Erie County, formerly of South Strabane, is seeking five patents for his radio-wave cancer treatment that could offer an alternative to surgery and chemotherapy.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center began testing his inventions on rats in May, and University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the nation's top-ranked cancer center, plans to begin testing it on rabbits and pigs.

Now Richard E. Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for creating carbon-based molecules known as buckyballs and nanotubes, will collaborate with M.D. Anderson on Kanzius' inventions.

Smalley, founder of the Rice University Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory in Houston, has the same B-cell leukemia afflicting Kanzius.

His nanotubes are nontoxic, nonalergenic carbon molecules with a surface area resembling tube-shaped chicken wire. Because the human body is composed of carbon, nanotubes have many potential medical uses, Smalley's assistant, Paul Cherukuri, said.

Smalley and his team will design nanotubes to carry a special payload to cancer cells, rendering them vulnerable to radio waves, without affecting healthy tissue -- a process detailed in Kanzius' patent applications.

Kanzius spent a career building and operating radio stations. While undergoing chemotherapy, he developed his ideas to target cancer with existing technology, including the use of nanoparticles, and killing them with radio frequencies.