Scientists from Washington University in St.Louis are in the process of developing a 'golden' bullet for cancer, which will use gold nanoparticles to kill the tumours.
Scientists from Washington University in St.Louis are in the process of developing a 'golden' bullet for cancer, which will use gold nanoparticles to kill the tumours.
The researchers- including Dr. Younan Xia, James M. McKelvey, Michael J. Welch- described the successful photothermal treatment of tumours in mice by using gold bullets, which are gold nanocages that, when injected, selectively accumulate in tumours.
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Brain tumors are the abnormal growth of brain cells that may be benign or metastatic. Brain tumors account for about 2.4% of all the tumor diagnosesandare most challenging due to their critically delicate location.
Brain tumors are the abnormal growth of brain cells that may be benign or metastatic. Brain tumors account for about 2.4% of all the tumor diagnosesandare most challenging due to their critically delicate location.
"We saw significant changes in tumour metabolism and histology, which is remarkable given that the work was exploratory, the laser 'dose' had not been maximized, and the tumors were 'passively' rather than 'actively' targeted," said Welch.
The nanocages themselves are harmless.
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"The key to photothermal therapy is the cages' ability to efficiently absorb light and convert it to heat," said Xia.
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They are coloured by something called a surface plasmon resonance. Some of the electrons in the gold are not anchored to individual atoms but instead form a free-floating electron gas, explained Xia.
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This collective oscillation, the surface plasmon, picks a particular wavelength, or colour, out of the incident light, and this determines the colour we see.he conversion of light to heat arises from the same physical effect as the colour.
The resonance has two parts. At the resonant frequency, light is typically both scattered off the cages and absorbed by them.
By controlling the cages' size, the researchers tailor them to achieve maximum absorption.
The cells that line a tumour's blood vessel, normally packed so tightly they form a waterproof barrier, are disorganized and irregularly shaped, and there are gaps between them.
The nanocages infiltrate through those gaps efficiently enough that they turn the surface of the normally pinkish tumor black.
The researchers found that in the nanocage-injected mice, the skin surface temperature increased rapidly from 32 degrees Celsius to 54 degrees.
In the buffer-injected mice, however, the surface temperature remained below 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Then the researchers observed that the tumours of nanocage-injected mice were significantly fainter on the PET scans than those of buffer-injected mice, indicating that many tumor cells were no longer functioning.
The tumours in the nanocage-treated mice were later found to have marked histological signs of cellular damage.
The study has been published in the journal Small. (ANI)
Source-ANI
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