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Monday, 10th October 2005 (5468 views)

Gold nanoparticles can be used to destroy malignant cancer cells, signifying a technological breakthrough that could lead to the detection and treatment of specific cancers in humans.

Father and son team Ivan and Mostafa El-Sayed, from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Georgia Institute of Technology respectively, previously identified how gold nanoparticles could be bound to malignant cells, thereby facilitating cancer detection.

Now they have discovered a way of destroying the malignant cancer cells without damaging the surrounding tissue.

After binding gold nanoparticles to both benign and cancerous cells, with the aid of an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), they found that an argon laser killed the cancerous cells more quickly, whilst those cells not bound to the gold remained undamaged.

"The malignant cells required less than half the laser energy to be killed than the benign cells," explained Ivan El-Sayed.

This technology could lead to the gold and EGFR compound being injected directly into patients, enabling doctors to find and destroy cancerous cells earlier than current practises allow.

Gold has previously been used in humans to find cancerous lymph nodes and Mr I El-Sayed said: "Our work with gold nanoparticles may result in a valuable tool in fighting not only oral cancers, but also a number of other types, including stomach, colon and skin cancers."

He further suggested that "only a few cents worth of gold can yield results" in the fight against cancer.

 

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