![]() As well, the lasers that are normally used for heating the particles fire continuous beams of infrared light. The first is that some gold nanoparticles invariably end up in and around normal cells, so healthy tissue can get damaged when the lasers go after cancers. Unfortunately, the nanoparticle heater strategy has two problems, says Dmitri Lapotko, a physicist formerly with Rice and now head of laser science at Masimo Corporation, a medical nanotechnology company in Irvine, California. When researchers hit the gold atoms with infrared laser light, which can travel through centimeters of tissue, the particles heat up and kill the cancer cells. But once inside the cells, the nanoparticles can act as Trojan horses. To clean up their surroundings, those cells then often engulf the nanoparticles. As a result, when gold nanoparticles are injected into the bloodstream, they tend to seep out of the vessel openings and congregate around tumors. Solid cancer tumors typically have leaky blood vessels. One approach pioneered over the last decade by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and elsewhere has shown that clusters of gold atoms known as nanoparticles can serve as a potent weapon against cancer cells. In recent years, physicians and scientists have looked to nanotechnology for help. But this standard approach to fighting cancer is anything but foolproof. Oncologists then typically follow up surgery with either radiation treatments or chemotherapy to increase the chances of eliminating any residual tumor cells. ![]() When surgeons operate on cancer patients, they do their best to remove every last diseased cell, because any left behind can grow into new tumors or metastasize throughout the body. If the technique proves successful in people, it could dramatically improve the odds for cancer patients, particularly in cases where surgically removing an entire tumor is impossible. But the researchers are designing a clinical trial that could begin testing the therapy in humans in the next 2 years. For now, the approach has only been tried in a handful of mice. Clusters of gold atoms can detect and kill cancer cells commonly left behind after tumor-removal surgery, according to a study of a new nanotechnology technique.
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