The aim would then be to target the diseased tissues only, limiting any damage you would cause to the healthy neuronal networks of the brain. This is one of the major causes of side-effects seen in cancer sufferers.

The answer is nanomedicine utilizing nanoparticles consisting of inorganic titanium dioxide interfaced with soft biological material. This allows nanomaterials to be put into use for biomedical applications.

What has been demonstrated is that these nanoparticles can be effectively targeted towards a specific target tissue. This was made easier by the fact that brain cancer has a unique receptor that can be targeted giving the treatment its specificity.

The specificity is conferred by the nanoparticles bound soft biological material, which in this instance is an antibody. Antibodies have incredibly specialized binding sites that will recognize a specific protein region known as the antibodies antigen. This allows for the antibodies to bind with high specificity to certain regions of the diseased cells. In this case the antigen is a diseased cells cell surface receptor.

Once the antibody has been bound to its target light can be shone on the nanoparticle. This causes the formation of oxygen free radicals. These free radicals will go into the cell and attack the cell’s DNA and mitochondria (the cell’s every production organelle). Once this is noticed the mitochondria will release chemical messengers to signal the cell to undergo a process of programmed death known as apoptosis.

What was most amazing is that it took only six hours of shining light on the nanoparticles to induce elevated cellular toxicity rates in almost 100% of the cancerous cells. With further enhancement it is foreseeable that you could be diagnosed with cancer and within a few days and some light treatment obliterating most of your diseased cells.

The technique is at the stage of pre-clinical model testing with a view to develop it further for a clinical setting.

What this means, more importantly, is a far less barbaric approach to cancer treatment that doesn’t fall under the slash, poison and burn headings of treatment. Leaving the patient with noticeable side-effects. This may pave the way for treatments that are vastly more effective and at the same time have no side-effects – CT

Source: Science Daily

The carbon nanotubes are coated in gold, which is then itself coated with a cell targeting bio-agent that ensures specificity to the targeted tissue. In this case the cancer metastasis.

This new method could be used as an alternative to other nanoparticles and fluorescent labels used in non-invasive detection of cancerous cells. It is thought that these specialised nanotubes would be more efficient and less toxic in labeling their targets.

The carbon nanotubes were coated in a thin film of gold due to past concerns about toxicity of nanotubes in vivo. However it was found that once these nanotubes were gold coated they absorbed laser radiation more efficiently and were less toxic. More importantly this meant that very low levels of radiation could be used to detect the nanotubes.

The synthesis process involves the reaction of the carbon nanotubes and gold chloride in ambient temperatures. This technique is said to be very simple and above all environmentally friendly.

A study has been carried out in which the carbon nanotubes have been used as a contrast agent for detecting cancer cells in the lymphatic system. This plays an important role in metastasis.

The golden nanotubes were marked with LYVE-1 a specific receptor found on lymphatic endothelium. They were targeted to these cells as they play an important role in metastasis as they come into contact with tumor cells.

With this technique it was demonstrated that the golden nanoparticles could be used to diagnose and treat the cancer at a cellular level. This entailed both targeting to the lymphatic endothelium and eradication of cancer micro-metastasis in the critical sentinal lymph nodes. This is incredibly important as the sentinal lymph nodes are those reached first by metastasizing cancer cells from a primary tumour.

This development means that in the future it may be possible therapeutically to prevent tumour metastasis with the use of golden coated nanoparticles. – CT

Source: University of Arkansas