Cancer Targeting Nanoprobes Are Closer Than We Think
Fantastic Voyage, Innerspace, whatever analogy you like to get you in the mood for this news: scientists at UC Berkeley have created nanoprobes that could one day fly through our body, hunting down and zapping tumor cells.
Sounds good, as the physical and mental costs of chemotherapy – which takes a much less targeted approach – are horrific. Apparently scientists all around the world have been working on nanoprobes like these for a decade, but UC Berkeley’s “nanocorals” achieve a goal no microscopic surgery tool has yet to reach – the ability to communicate their progress back to their gigantic scientist counterparts.
“If you’re sending a satellite into space, you need it to do more than one thing. It must reach its target, detect its surroundings, and communicate back to ground control,” says Luke Lee, head of the program that devised the nanocoral. “The same is true in the molecular galaxy. We need probes that can find a diseased cell, treat it, and tell us about the local environment so we can determine whether the treatment is working. The nanocoral probes we invented are an important step in this direction.”
Not bad, science! For more on nanocorals, check out the post on the topic from PhysOrg.
Source & Photo Source: PhysOrg
