Researchers are using nanoparticles to kill tumor cells inside the eye. This nanotechnology also has the potential to be used for multiple applications.
Nanotechnology is the creation of useful materials, devices, and systems used to manipulate matter at an incredibly small scale—between 1 and 100 nanometers.
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter—1/80,000 the width of a human hair, or about ten times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Such nanoscale objects can be useful by themselves, or as part of larger devices containing multiple nanoscale objects.
Nanotechnology has the potential to enable the translation of molecular-based science into clinical advances, thereby facilitating major progress in the early detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
The emerging field of nanotechnology involves scientists from many different disciplines including physicists, chemists, engineers, material scientists and biologists. Nanotechnology is being applied to almost every industry imaginable, including, but not limited to electronics, magnetics and optoelectronics, energy, information technology, materials development, transportation, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical applications.
Nanoscale devices are the same size as many important biological objects, and therefore can be used to see and manipulate biological activity invisible to the naked eye. Nanoscale devices are smaller than human cells, which are 10,000 to 20,000 nanometers in diameter, and cellular components, such as mitochondria, that are inside cells. Nanoscale devices are similar in size to large biomolecules, such as enzymes and receptors—hemoglobin, for example, is approximately five nanometers in diameter, while a cell’s wall is around six nanometers thick. They can, therefore, perform tasks inside the body that would otherwise not be possible.
For example, nanoscale devices smaller than 50 nanometers can easily enter most cells, while those smaller than 20 nanometers can move through the walls of blood vessels. As a result, nanoscale devices can readily interact with molecules on both the cell surface and within the cell. Larger devices, such as microfluidic chips, are also being developed with nanoscale components for advanced diagnostics applications.
Most biological processes, including those processes leading to cancer, occur at the nanoscale. For cancer researchers, nanotechnology offers unprecedented means to monitor and manipulate these processes in the search for cures.
The ability to simultaneously interact with multiple critical proteins and nucleic acids at the molecular level will provide a better understanding of the complex behavior of cells in their normal state as well as the transformation into malignant cells.
Nanotechnology provides a platform for integrating research in proteomics—the study of the structure and function of proteins, including the way they work and interact with each other inside cells—with other scientific investigations into the molecular nature of cancer.
One such breakthrough is: Researchers at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center have developed a new nanoparticle that uses a tumor cell’s protective mechanism against itself — short-circuiting tumor cell metabolism and killing tumor cells.
Four-year study conducted on the mouse model in advanced breast cancer metastasis in the eye’s anterior chamber, Petty and colleagues found that the new nanoparticle not only killed tumor cells in the eye, but also extended the survival of experimental mice bearing 4T1 tumors, a cell line that is extremely difficult to kill. “Previous monotherapies have not extended the lifetimes of mice bearing this type of tumor.
for more details visit:http://www.kellogg.umich.edu/