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Thursday, 10th May 2007 (9278 views)

Gold nanoparticles could be used to deliver medicine into otherwise inaccessible parts of the human body, scientists have claimed.

Experts at Princeton University in the US have created particles which can infiltrate cancer cells or deep inside the lungs as they are only a couple of hundred nanometres wide.

The particles can then be loaded with medicine or imaging agents such as gold, which can be picked up using CT scans and MRIs.

"The intersection of materials science and chemistry is allowing advances that were never before possible," said Robert Prud'homme, a Princeton chemical engineering professor and the director of a National Science Foundation-funded team of researchers at the university.

"No one had a good route to incorporate drugs and imaging agents in nanoparticles."

The team has created a system to utilise the size of the nanoparticles, which are too large to pass through the membrane of normal cells but will pass through larger holes or defects in the capillaries of tumours, to effectively target specific areas of the body for treatment.

 

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