Atahualpa
02-12-2006, 07:53 PM
Nanoparticles Pair Up to Fight Disease
By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
type size: [A] [A] [A]
<!-- article -->Feb. 10, 2006—The ability of a virus and a speck of gold to automatically pair up could lead to microscopic, multipurpose shuttles that target and destroy disease in the human body.
The tiny platform could deliver drugs, genes or restorative stem cells to different parts of the body, and could even be used to grow stem cells.
"In a relatively simple way, we produced a targeted nano-sensor that has multiple applications," said Renata Pasqualini, professor of medicine and cancer biology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Pasqualini and her team reported the work in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The simplicity came as a surprise to the researchers, who originally thought that in order to create the so-called nano-shuttles, they would have to genetically manipulate a string-shaped virus, known as a phage, to bind with a speck of gold.
Gold is a metal that does not produce an immune reaction from the human body.
But when combined in a solution, the electrostatic properties of the two products spontaneously drew them together like opposite ends of magnets.
In this case, the phage has a negative charge and the gold has a positive charge. The result was a very tiny crisscrossed bunch of stringy phage connected by dots of gold.
To program the resulting nano-shuttle to target disease, the scientists built on their previous work, which proved that the human vascular system contains unique molecular addresses, analogous to addresses on city streets.
Encoding a biological package with a distinctive zip code allows the body to deliver it to specific tissues or organs.
To encode the nano-shuttle, the scientists genetically inserted a protein into the shell of the phage that matched the zip code of the location of the desired tissue.
"This is a breakthrough, because the alternative way of going about this would be using synthetic compounds which are expensive and require complex chemistry for them to be coupled to nano-particles," said team member Glauco R. Souza, a post doctoral fellow at the university.
And because the shuttle is essentially a scaffold of biological material, it seems to nurture the healthy growth of stem cells.
The idea is that once the nano-shuttle arrives at the desired location, it could do one of many things: it could deliver a relevant drug; it could deliver a group of stem cells designed to regrow damaged tissue; or doctors could track the gold particle using imaging technology and heat the particle with a laser to destroy a tumor, for example.
"It's a very clever combination of two technologies," said biomedical engineer Philip LeDuc, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
"But there are all kinds of challenges that exist inside this particular area of research. One of the hardest part is making sure you are specifically attaching these things to the right area."
The scientists are chipping away at such challenges with hopes of someday translating the research into real clinical applications.
Atahualpa thinks the researchers will end up with gold fever....now that they know a small amount about the magical sacred properties of gold! Wait until they start discovering the medicinal properties of silver...powerful medicine against pathogens.
By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
type size: [A] [A] [A]
<!-- article -->Feb. 10, 2006—The ability of a virus and a speck of gold to automatically pair up could lead to microscopic, multipurpose shuttles that target and destroy disease in the human body.
The tiny platform could deliver drugs, genes or restorative stem cells to different parts of the body, and could even be used to grow stem cells.
"In a relatively simple way, we produced a targeted nano-sensor that has multiple applications," said Renata Pasqualini, professor of medicine and cancer biology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Pasqualini and her team reported the work in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The simplicity came as a surprise to the researchers, who originally thought that in order to create the so-called nano-shuttles, they would have to genetically manipulate a string-shaped virus, known as a phage, to bind with a speck of gold.
Gold is a metal that does not produce an immune reaction from the human body.
But when combined in a solution, the electrostatic properties of the two products spontaneously drew them together like opposite ends of magnets.
In this case, the phage has a negative charge and the gold has a positive charge. The result was a very tiny crisscrossed bunch of stringy phage connected by dots of gold.
To program the resulting nano-shuttle to target disease, the scientists built on their previous work, which proved that the human vascular system contains unique molecular addresses, analogous to addresses on city streets.
Encoding a biological package with a distinctive zip code allows the body to deliver it to specific tissues or organs.
To encode the nano-shuttle, the scientists genetically inserted a protein into the shell of the phage that matched the zip code of the location of the desired tissue.
"This is a breakthrough, because the alternative way of going about this would be using synthetic compounds which are expensive and require complex chemistry for them to be coupled to nano-particles," said team member Glauco R. Souza, a post doctoral fellow at the university.
And because the shuttle is essentially a scaffold of biological material, it seems to nurture the healthy growth of stem cells.
The idea is that once the nano-shuttle arrives at the desired location, it could do one of many things: it could deliver a relevant drug; it could deliver a group of stem cells designed to regrow damaged tissue; or doctors could track the gold particle using imaging technology and heat the particle with a laser to destroy a tumor, for example.
"It's a very clever combination of two technologies," said biomedical engineer Philip LeDuc, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
"But there are all kinds of challenges that exist inside this particular area of research. One of the hardest part is making sure you are specifically attaching these things to the right area."
The scientists are chipping away at such challenges with hopes of someday translating the research into real clinical applications.
Atahualpa thinks the researchers will end up with gold fever....now that they know a small amount about the magical sacred properties of gold! Wait until they start discovering the medicinal properties of silver...powerful medicine against pathogens.