Monday, 6th June 2005 (4381 views)

Scientists in the US have announced that binding gold nanoparticles to a specific antibody for cancer cells could make cancer detection much easier.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and Georgia Institute of Technology found that by conjugating, or binding, the gold nanoparticles to an antibody for EFGR (epidermal growth factor receptor), a protein that most cancer cells have all over their surface, the nanoparticles attach themselves to the cancer cells.

The father and son research team, Ivan El-Sayed, MD, assistant professor of otolaryngology at UCSF Medical Center, and his father, Mostafa El-Sayed, PhD, director of the Laser Dynamics Laboratory and chemistry professor at Georgia Tech, published their findings in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.

Mostafa El-Sayed commented: "Gold nanoparticles are very good at scattering and absorbing light. We wanted to see if we could harness that scattering property in a living cell to make cancer detection easier. So far, the results are extremely promising."

"After we added the nanoparticle-bound antibody to cells, using a simple technique known as darkfield microscopy, we saw the cancer cells light up under the microscope," Ivan El-Sayed added. "The healthy cells don't bind the particles well and are dark compared to the cancer. Since the particles have colour, we can test multiple antibodies at the same time with a white light. Using simple optics, we can develop low cost techniques for rapid automated detection of cancer in biopsies. Further, we hope to use the scattering and absorption properties to develop techniques to detect cancer in humans without a biopsy."

The researchers found that the gold nanoparticles have 600 per cent greater affinity for cancer cells than for non-cancerous cells, when tested on cell cultures of oral cancer and one non-malignant cell line. The technique does not require expensive high-powered microscopes or lasers to view the results, using instead a simple microscope and white light.

 

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