The night Peter Saephanh was admitted to a hospital to begin treatment on what he later learned was foot cancer, his oncologist sat down in his hospital room and started crying.

She wept for him because she knew the pain the high school junior, now a third-year political science student, was about to undergo - an anguish that may soon become history, thanks to the technology of nanomachines and the efforts of two UCLA professors.

Jeffrey Zink, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, used elements of nanotechnology to discover how to deliver medicine to specific cancer cells, thereby limiting the adverse effects of current treatment methods.

This new process can target problem cells and increase control of treatment, making it a viable alternative to chemotherapy, Zink and Tamanoi said.

The process, which utilizes the first-ever artificial nanomachine operating inside of a living human cell, centers on a particle 100 nanometers across that has a number of tubular pores lining its edges, said the researchers, both of whom work at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute. Inside each pore is a miniscule machine containing a cancer-fighting drug that, once activated, pushes the medicine out to its diseased surroundings.

“It’s like a honeycomb, and you can store drugs in it,” Tamanoi said.