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Friday, 17th July 2009 (1342 views)

It has long been held that tea has health benefits but new research by scientists in the US has found that it can also be used to create cancer-fighting gold nanoparticles.

A paper by researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia, which was recently published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry, suggests the humble cuppa could eliminate the need for the intensive industrial processes usually required to create nanoparticles, Natural News reports.

They found that when gold salts were mixed with a solution of soybeans and water, naturally-occurring soy phytochemicals reacted with the salts to produce pure gold nanoparticles.

The team repeated the experiment after substituting Darjeeling tea for the soybean-water mixture with the same results.

"Our discovery has provided a practical way to deliver cancer-fighting phytochemicals directly to tumor cells through gold nanoparticles," said researcher Kattesh Katti.

Earlier this week, Medical News Today reported that scientists at Louisiana State University have discovered that gold nanoparticles damage the HeLa and Jurkat types of cancer cell, meaning they could be used in non-invasive treatments for the disease.

 

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