Date published: 2005/08/02
The BBC says:
Nanotechnology has been harnessed to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.
The technique works by inserting microscopic synthetic rods called carbon nanotubules into cancer cells.
When the rods are exposed to near-infra red light from a laser they heat up, killing the cell, while cells without rods are left unscathed.
Details of the Stanford University work are published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researcher Dr Hongjie Dai said: "One of the longstanding problems in medicine is how to cure cancer without harming normal body tissue.
"Standard chemotherapy destroys cancer cells and normal cells alike.
"That's why patients often lose their hair and suffer numerous other side effects.
"For us, the Holy Grail would be finding a way to selectively kill cancer cells and not damage healthy ones."
The carbon nanotubules used by the Stanford team are only half the width of a DNA molecule, and thousands can easily fit inside a typical cell.
Under normal circumstances near-infra red light passes through the body harmlessly.
But the Stanford team found that if they placed a solution of carbon nanotubules under a near-infra red laser beam, the solution heated up to about 70C in two minutes.
They then placed the tubules inside cells, and found they were quickly destroyed by the heat generated by the laser beam.
Dr Dai said: "It's actually quite simple and amazing. We're using an intrinsic property of nanotubes to develop a weapon that kills cancer."
The next step was to find a way to introduce the nantubules into cancer cells, but not healthy cells.
The researchers did this by taking advantage of the fact that, unlike normal cells, the surface of cancer cells is covered with receptors for a vitamin known as folate.
They coated the nanotubules with folate molecules, making it easy for them to pass into cancer cells, but unable to bind with their healthy cousins.
Exposure to the laser duly killed off the diseased cells, but left the healthy ones untouched.
One of the first practical outcomes of research into nanotechnology (although it will be years before this kind of work reaches the clinical stage). Of course the chattering classes of Britain, led by the so-called environmentalists, hate nanotechnology (it's not two hundred years old), but fortunately this technology continues moving forward, even if in the US, China and elsewhere.
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