Tuesday, 2nd August 2005 (4533 views)

Scientists at a US university have developed a new technology that uses gold nanoparticles to help identify cancer and other diseases in proteases.

Researchers at Rice University's Centre for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN), Houston, Texas, have developed a new nanoprobe that could improve the detection of the presence of cancer and atherosclerosis, by identifying altered proteases, enzymes which process protein.

Diseases such as cancer can be identified using a 'beacon' that is one hundred times smaller than a human cell. This beacon will illuminate when in the presence of altered proteases, a signifier of cancer.

While this technology has been developed in the past, scientists have encountered difficulty in creating a beacon that is sufficiently unlit in its original state, making the 'cancer present' signal harder to distinguish.

However, scientists from Rice's CBEN outlined in September's Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications how they have overcome this problem by using a gold nanoparticle to 'quench' the initial illumination of the probe.

By tethering a gold nanoparticle measuring billionths of a metre to the probe, the light is greatly inhibited until it comes into contact with the specific protease.

In tests using a peptide tether cleaved by the enzyme collagenase, the scientists found that the light given off by the quantum dots in the probe was cut by more than 70 per cent when tethered with gold nanoparticles.

Rebekah Drezek, one of the authors of the study for CBEN, commented: "What is particularly powerful about the protease imaging probes described in this study is the combination of the contrast enhancement achievable through an activateable probe with the imaging advantages provided by the brightness, photostability, and tunability of quantum dots."

One of the primary advantages of using such a technique to identify diseases is that it does not require invasive surgery, as it uses near-infrared light, which passes harmlessly through skin tissue.

 

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