Tuesday, 23rd May 2006 (1370 views)

The use of gold in the treatment of cancer has again been demonstrated in a scientific study.

Recently, scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago found that antisense cancer drugs can be delivered to cells better with the help of gold nanoparticles. Meanwhile, researchers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York showed that gold particles could be used as 'biomarkers' to measure the uptake of drugs by cancer cells.

Now a group of scientists at Indiana's Purdue University has developed folic acid-based targeting agents for use with gold nanoparticles, Physorg.com reports.

Dr Ronald Andres and colleagues managed to engineer a polymer with folic acid and sulphur atoms added. Gold binds strongly with sulphur and when gold nanoparticles were added they formed a tight surface coating.

The scientists were able to determine that these gold particles were being taken up efficiently by certain cancer cells by using electron microscopes. Those cancer cells with folic acid receptors took up the particles, while those without them did not.

The paper was published in the Bioconjugate Chemistry journal.

 

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