Science News Bits of the Day

[Dardedar]

Why do scientists bother with this stuff when we have the power of prayer?

Nanospheres leave cancer no place to hide

21 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Celeste Biever

GOLD-coated glass "nanoshells" can reveal the location of tumours and
then destroy them minutes later in a burst of heat.

Using these particles to detect and destroy tumours could speed up
cancer treatment and reduce the use of potentially toxic drugs. It could
also make treatment cheaper, says Andre Gobin of Rice University in
Houston, Texas, who helped to create the particles.

In 2003 Gobin's supervisor Jennifer West showed that gold-coated silica
nanospheres could destroy tumours in mice, while leaving normal tissue
intact. The blood vessels surrounding tumours are leakier than those
in healthy tissue, so spheres injected into the bloodstream tend to
accumulate at tumour sites. Illuminating the tumour with a near-infrared
laser then excites a "sea" of loose electrons around the gold atoms via a
process called plasmon resonance. This creates heat, killing all the
nearby cells.

snip...

Biosciences, which West co-founded, will begin trials of the spheres in
humans in the next two months.

From issue 2609 of New Scientist magazine, 21 June 2007, page 28

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - our choices are: a) it won't work on humans, b) the side effects will be of the "operation was a success but the patient died" horrendous, c) insurance companies won't cover it and it will be too expensive for anybody but the Waltons, d) Big Pharma manages to either suppress the research or get the procedure declared illegal, or e) miracle of miracles - it works. I wouldn't put my money on e.