A cancer treatment that is more effective and less invasive than chemo may be on its way. Researchers have developed a method to fine-tune dendrimers to seek out and destroy cancer cells.
Researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Biologic Nanotechnology hope to prevent that problem by developing "smart" drug delivery devices that will knock out cancer cells with lethal doses, leaving normal cells unharmed, and even reporting back on their success.
The U-M group is using lab-made molecules called dendrimers, also known as nanoparticles, as the backbones of their delivery system. Dendrimers are tiny spheres whose width is ten thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, explains physics doctoral student Almut Mecke. "These spheres have all sorts of loose ends where you can attach things---for example, a targeting agent that can recognize a cancer cell and distinguish it from a healthy cell. You can also attach the drug that actually kills the cancer cells. If you have both of these functions on the same molecule, then you have a smart drug that knows which cells to attack."
Previously, dendrimers had shown a nasty and indiscriminate tendency to poke holes in cell membranes with their sharp edges, making them as big a threat to healthy cells as they were to cancerous ones. Researchers have found that this tendency is due to the electrical charge that the nanoparticles carried. With the charge removed, dendrimers can be introduced into healthy tissue and cause no damage. Moreover, they can be fine-tuned to seek out only the cancer cells and destructively bind with them.
Early experiments with mice have had positive results. Stay tuned.
via KurzweilAI
dear sir ,
i wants to know the full details of cancer cell detection using nanotechnology.and how the detected cell can be cure.
plz send me reply in detail.
thank u,
yours
R.Harish