Brown Discovery: High-Tech Early Detection of Cancer Cells
On the surface, gold appears to be a substance that has only aesthetic and symbolic value. Gold jewelry hints at wealth and beauty, while gold coins signifies money and power. Other than its glowing charm, gold appears to be entirely useless.A Brown University chemistry research team has disproved this theory entirely. Using gold nanoparticles, this team has developed a new technique to spot tiny, cancerous tumors in the liver. This is the first time that metal nanoparticles have been used as agents to find tumor-like masses through X-ray image scattering.
This will lead to a “much earlier discovery of cancer,” says Christoph Rose-Petruck, PhD, a chemistry professor at Brown University and author of the paper on gold nanoparticles published in the American Chemical Society journal, Nano Letters .
Spotting liver cancerIn particular, this new method will be able to locate hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer. Half a million people worldwide, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, are diagnosed with this cancer yearly, and many die within half a year.
Early diagnosis would be the biggest aid to preventing the takeover of this hepatocellular carcinoma, and the use of gold nanoparticles will allow for a much earlier detection by locating smaller particles.
Breakthrough: spotting cancerous masses earlierBy employing this new method, the team can spot cancer masses that have a diameter as small as five millimeters. Currently, methods were only able to spot masses that were six times larger (three centimeters). By the time the mass grows to three centimeters, it is already aggressive and difficult to remove via surgery.
In order to spot these small cancerous spots, the gold nanoparticles are charged, to increase the chance that cancerous cells would absorb them. Once absorbed by cancerous cells, the Brown team was able to detect the gold nanoparticles within these cells through an X-ray device.
Medical Nanoparticle Detection - News
Early diagnosis would be the biggest aid to preventing the takeover of this hepatocellular carcinoma, and the use of gold nanoparticles will allow for a much earlier detection by locating smaller particles. By employing this new method,
Earlier in the year, we ran stories on the use of the nanomaterial as a drug carrier for cancer treatment and for cancer detection. Now, researchers from the University of Georgia report that gold nanoparticles could be used to rapidly diagnose the flu
Manhattan CEO Manny Tsoupanarias said, "On June 6th we announced the acquisition of Senior Scientific and its game-changing medical/cancer technology. The Senior Scientific technology has the potential to dramatically improve detection and treatment in
Due to the highly specialized nature of both the nanoparticles and our detection device, only those particles stuck to their targeted cells are detected, making the results highly specific, objective (the results depend only on the cells,
a prestigious monthly journal featuring groundbreaking research in all areas of light generation, manipulation and detection. The finding builds on Zharov's previous discoveries involving the use of cancer-detecting gold and magnetic nanoparticles,
Polystyrene Spheres Coated With Gold Nanoparticles for Detection ...
A novel method has been developed here utilizing gold-modified polystyrene spheres (PS@Au) as carriers for the investigation of DNA hybridization. The immobilization ability of DNA probes on the PS@Au was investigated by a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). More gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were conjugated to the QCM surface in the form of PS@Au as compared with the AuNPs alone. The influence of PS, AuNPs population and size on the DNA probe fixation, and hybridization has been investigated. The results show that more AuNPs were achievable onto the QCM surface and could greatly increase the immobilization amount further hybridization amount of DNA. There was an optimal surface curvature for the probe DNA absorption. The curvature about 12 nm was more suited to the adsorption of probe DNA which could lead to the detection limit further down to 10(-12) M. These results demonstrate that the introduction of PS@Au, with polystyrene spheres as the medium between the QCM surface and the AuNPs, could achieve modified QCM surfaces and increase its detection ability for a better DNA assay and a novel platform for the fabrication of DNA sensors.