Researchers at the CNRS Molecular Biology Institute in Paris and the University of Trieste, Italy, have suggested that challenging macrophages with nanohorns, a type of nanoparticle related chemically to carbon nanotubes, but with a different cone-like form, could result in an immune response potentially useful in treating cancers and some infectious diseases. When challenged with nanohorns in-vitro, mouse macrophages ingested a proportion of the nanohorns but also began to release reactive oxygen species as well as some other small molecules used to signal other cells in the immune system. The researchers postulate filling the interior of the nanohorns with different types of antigens to “tune” this cellular distress call to different cancers or other diseases. Unlike some types of carbon nanotubes, which in recent studies have been shown to kill macrophages as they cannot ingest them due to their long length relative to their diameter, nanohorns may be less prone to causing such an effect.

Read more: Advanced Materials, Vol 20 Issue 12

Posted: June 19th, 2008 under Nanomedicine, Nanotechnology.
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Researchers at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, have succeeded in engineering mammalian cells to produce magnetic nanoparticles that can be imaged using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The nanoparticles are contained in bacterial magnetosomes produced by the magA gene in naturally-occuring magnetotactic bacteria and the researchers have succeeded in causing this gene to be expressed in mammalian cells resulting in the production of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles using endogenous iron from the cells. The technique overcomes some problems encountered with previous attempts to produce magnetically-marked cells, e.g. the tendancy of the MRI signal to become weaker as the cells divide. A number of other researchers believe that the ability to create magnetic nanoparticles using bacteria in this way may open up a variety of other exciting applications and opportunities, e.g. using bacteria as biological factories.

Source: MIT Technology Review

Posted: June 18th, 2008 under Nanomedicine, Nanotechnology.
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In a recent study at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, scientists have coated carbon nanotubes with monoclonal antibodies that can bind to target sites on lymphoma cells. When exposed to near-infrared light, which can penetrate through several centimetres of tissue, the carbon nanotubes which conduct heat energy very efficiently, heat up by several degrees, enough to kill the cancerous cells by a process known as hyperthermal ablation. The technique is attractive to clinicians as near-infrared light causes little damage to healthy tissues. This is one of a number of current studies that are exploring the potential of carbon nanotubes, which have a number of extremely interesting properties, to be used in cancer treatment and in a variety of other medical applications.

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas

Posted: June 17th, 2008 under Nanomedicine, Nanotechnology.
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