{"id":404494,"date":"2010-03-08T17:29:25","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T22:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidkirkpatrick.wordpress.com\/?p=7000"},"modified":"2010-03-08T17:29:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T22:29:25","slug":"cancer-killing-nanotech-assassins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/404494","title":{"rendered":"Cancer killing nanotech assassins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nanotechnology is proving to have many medical applications, and the bulk of those apps are in cancer research. Here’s the latest from Cornell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The release:<\/p>\n

\n

Like little golden assassins, ’smart’ nanoparticles identify, target and kill cancer cells<\/h1>\n

ITHACA, N.Y. – Another weapon in the arsenal against cancer: Nanoparticles that identify, target and kill specific cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.<\/p>\n

Led by Carl Batt, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Food Science, the researchers synthesized nanoparticles \u2013 shaped something like a dumbbell \u2013 made of gold sandwiched between two pieces of iron oxide. They then attached antibodies, which target a molecule found only in colorectal cancer cells, to the particles. Once bound, the nanoparticles are engulfed by the cancer cells.<\/p>\n

To kill the cells, the researchers use a near-infrared laser, which is a wavelength that doesn’t harm normal tissue at the levels used, but the radiation is absorbed by the gold in the nanoparticles. This causes the cancer cells to heat up and die.<\/p>\n

“This is a so-called ’smart’ therapy,” Batt said. “To be a smart therapy, it should be targeted, and it should have some ability to be activated only when it’s there and then kills just the cancer cells.”<\/p>\n

The goal, said lead author and biomedical graduate student Dickson Kirui, is to improve the technology and make it suitable for testing in a human clinical trial. The researchers are now working on a similar experiment targeting prostate cancer cells.<\/p>\n

“If, down the line, you could clinically just target the cancer cells, you could then spare the health surrounding cells from being harmed \u2013 that is the critical thing,” Kirui said.<\/p>\n

Gold has potential as a material key to fighting cancer in future smart therapies. It is biocompatible, inert and relatively easy to tweak chemically. By changing the size and shape of the gold particle, Kirui and colleagues can tune them to respond to different wavelengths of energy.<\/p>\n

Once taken up by the researchers’ gold particles, the cancer cells are destroyed by heat \u2013 just a few degrees above normal body temperature \u2013 while the surrounding tissue is left unharmed. Such a low-power laser does not have any effect on surrounding cells because that particular wavelength does not heat up cells if they are not loaded up with nanoparticles, the researchers explained.<\/p>\n

Using iron oxide \u2013 which is basically rust \u2013 as the other parts of the particles might one day allow scientists to also track the progress of cancer treatments using magnetic resonance imaging, Kirui said, by taking advantage of the particles’ magnetic properties.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

The research was funded by the Sloan Foundation and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, which has been a partner with Cornell since 1999 to bring laboratory work to clinical testing. The research is reported in the Feb. 15 online edition of the journal\u00a0Nanotechnology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Text by Anne Ju, Cornell Chronicle<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nanotechnology is proving to have many medical applications, and the bulk of those apps are in cancer research. Here’s the latest from Cornell. The release: Like little golden assassins, ’smart’ nanoparticles identify, target and kill cancer cells ITHACA, N.Y. – Another weapon in the arsenal against cancer: Nanoparticles that identify, target and kill specific cancer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4050,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4050"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}