Israel develops gold nanoparticles to detect early cancer

Israeli physicists have developed human-tested methods for the first time using gold nanoparticles to detect early cancer. A team led by Professor Deol Ficksler of the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at the University of Bayland in Israel, after five years of research, confirmed the bright future of nanotechnology in the early diagnosis of cancer.

Release date: 2014-09-01

Israeli physicists have developed human-tested methods for the first time using gold nanoparticles to detect early cancer. A team led by Professor Deol Ficksler of the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at the University of Bayland in Israel, after five years of research, confirmed the bright future of nanotechnology in the early diagnosis of cancer. They developed non-invasive, non-radiative optical systems for detecting cancer in the brain, neck and mouth, as well as detecting the incidence of cancer in the tongue and throat. This method has been successfully tested on animals and has recently passed human testing and has been confirmed to be effective.

Cancer can be detected in a few minutes with a success rate of over 90%

How does this invention work? If a patient with pain in the mouth and other conditions goes to the doctor, there is a disturbing possibility that the patient is suffering from oral, tongue or throat cancer. The doctor asks the patient to use a special mixture to gargle and confirm the patient's cancer in a few minutes.

This kind of test is very simple. It takes only a few minutes for the patient to gargle with a mixture of gold nanoparticles. These particles can effectively color the cancer cells. The stained parts are scanned by a specially developed tool. The doctor can display the computer screen. View the results. Current clinical trials have shown that this method can successfully detect cancer in the human tongue and throat. The detection of tongue cancer was performed at the University of Tel Aviv School of Dentistry, and the detection of throat cancer was performed by the ear, nose and throat of the Sheba Medical Center. “We compare the results of the trial with the results of the patient's biopsy, which is more than 90% successful,” said Ficksler.

Two technical means to achieve this rapid detection technology

The testing methods developed by Fixex include two technical means that have not fully demonstrated their full potential in the medical field, "physical diffusion" technology and "nanotechnology".

The "physical diffusion" technology developed in the late 1970s, the main theoretical basis is that the reflection of the beam on the body organs can help detect tumors. Studies of the diffusion of light blocked by organs can show which part of the organ absorbs or reflects light, helping to detect cancer cell growth. “The researchers spent a long time building the model and trying to figure out what happened to the organ under the principle of light reflection, but the research in this field has been stagnant for some time because the model does not show whether the tumor is detected,” says Ficksler. It is also impossible to confirm whether the diffusion source comes from different parts of the body. As an excellent model of basic research, it turns out that it has little clinical value." He explained: "The theoretical model called diffuse reflection has been in the 1980s. It's very popular, but the detection of cancer can't rely solely on the basis of light-to-organ reflection. To confirm whether cancer cells grow, we need substances or particles that can better image the organs."

"About 12 years ago, a new idea called molecular medicine entered people's attention," Fixler said. Unlike the previous idea of ​​seeking a general image, the new idea hopes to seek conclusions at the molecular level. Based on this idea, a method called "contrast imaging" was developed in the last decade. Using this method, the doctor injects a secret agent into the patient's body and implants it in a place where the doctor wants to detect the growth of the cancer cell to obtain the desired image. The secret agent is a nanoparticle. Among them, gold nanoparticles are widely used because of their non-toxicity and good integration with the human body.

“In fact, nanoparticles are small robots that run in our blood,” explains Fixler. “When nanoparticles are in cancer antibody molecules, we can observe that these particles can stick to cancer cells. Nuclear magnetic resonance or CT examination, cancer cells can be identified. Because of certain quantum properties, gold nanoparticles can have a strong reflection of light at a certain wavelength."

In recent years, a technique using gold nanoparticle imaging has been developed, and disease detection and treatment instruments based on this technology have emerged, but this instrument has a substantial problem, namely how to balance the creation of high-definition quality images and the required The relationship between the amount of gold.

The new algorithm model can also extend this technique to detect other diseases

Fixel and his colleagues are constantly improving their detection methods. “It’s like looking for a tunnel,” he explains. “It’s not easy to find the tunnel just by detecting the external environment. Sometimes you need to wait for someone to come out from it. We not only rely on the light reflected by the particles, but also the light spread on the human tissue. The resulting effect detects cancer cells."

The researchers changed the traditional spherical shape of the gold nanoparticles and made it into a rod shape that changed the length of the particle's reflected waves, allowing the particles to penetrate deeper into the body's tissues. More importantly, they developed a mathematical algorithm that transforms the information reflected by the particles into actual images. “The particles penetrate the tissue, we don’t see the reflection,” says Fixler. “But we can see how they affect light diffusion in human tissue. Based on the number of photons reflected from tissue cells, a mathematical function can be built. ."

Fixel's approach is not limited to cancer detection, he is also developing diagnostic methods for multiple sclerosis. His research caught the attention of the international scientific community. In June last year, the London School of Medicine awarded him a scholarship to fund his research with other scientists at King's College London the following year. The 44-year-old Ficksler was born in Tel Aviv and is currently the director of the Advanced Optical Microscopy Laboratory at Bayland University. He completed his postdoctoral work at the University of Valencia and was a visiting professor at the Laser Research Institute of South China Normal University.

Source: Technology Daily

Keywords: Israel, gold nanoparticles, cancer diagnosis

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