Monday, 14th August 2006 (4459 views)

Scientists in Sweden have found that gold nanospheres could be used as carriers for biomedical purposes because they do not affect certain immune system cells.

The research, conducted by scientists from Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, found that when gold nanoparticles were released in a controlled way into the body, they did not activate human antigen presenting dendritic cells (DCs).

This finding was brought about by eliminating the endotoxin contamination from the gold particles.

Dr Susanne Gabrielsson told Nanowerk: "Pure gold nanoparticles do not affect the 'sentinels of the immune system' – DCs. Thus our results support the suitability of gold nanoparticles as inert carriers for use in biomedical applications."

Gold nanoparticles have many scientific applications, with researchers at America's Brown University recently using them to create nanowires with many possible technical uses.

However, scientists need to be careful that they don't disregard certain avenues of research because of contaminants.

Dr Gabrielsson warned: "Contaminants, such as [endotoxin] LPs, as found in our study, may lead to erroneous conclusions that cause developers to abandon what might be a promising material."

 

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