Polymer nanoagents that can 'light up' tiny areas of diseased tissues that conventional methods fail to detect, have been created by a research team led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) The nanoagents, known as 'semiconductor polymer nanoparticles' (SPNs), can store light energy from sources such as sunlight, near-infrared light or even light from [...]
Researchers investigating ways to deliver high doses of cancer-killing drugs inside tumors have shown they can use a laser and light-activated gold nanoparticles to remotely trigger the release of approved cancer drugs inside cancer cells in laboratory cultures. The study by researchers at Rice University and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine appears in Proceedings [...]
A recent study reveals that a 70-year-old malaria drug is capable of blocking immune cells in the liver allowing the arrival of nanoparticles at their intended tumor site, thus overcoming a major obstacle of targeted drug delivery, according to a team of researchers headed by Houston Methodist. Numerous cancer patients fail to respond to chemotherapies [...]
In Fragile X Syndrome–the leading genetic form of intellectual disability and autism–the effects of a single defective gene ripple through a series of chemical pathways, altering signals between brain cells. It’s a complex condition, but new research from Rockefeller University finds that inhibiting a regulatory protein alters the intricate signalling chemistry that is responsible for [...]
One of the most rudimentary methods of counting has received a 21st century make-over due to the quest for developing more powerful and ever-faster computers. A global team of Researchers, including Professor C. David Wright from the University of Exeter, have succeeded in developing a nanoscale optical ‘abacus’, capable of using light signals in order [...]
Shaping nanometric gold particles - of the size of millionths of a millimeter - to improve their properties in biomedicine and photonics has been made possible thanks to a special laser system in a work carried out at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and now published in Science. The research, in which the CIC [...]
When a drug enters the body, it doesn’t generally target a particular part of the body. Paracetamol, for example, affects the whole body but its effects are felt at the source of pain. Likewise, cancer drugs can be imprecise; some enter the bloodstream to treat cancer at various anatomical points in the body, some are [...]
UNSW Sydney scientists have developed a way to control the shape of polymer molecules so they self-assemble into non-spherical nanoparticles - an advance that could improve the delivery of toxic drugs to tumours. "Very little in nature is perfectly spherical," says study senior author Professor Pall Thordarson of the UNSW School of Chemistry. "Most biological [...]
From the abstract: Isocitrate dehydrogenases play important roles in cellular metabolism and cancer. This review will discuss how the roles of isoforms 1 and 2 in normal cell and cancer metabolism are distinct from those of isoform 3. It will also explain why, unlike 1 and 2, mutations in isoform 3 in tumor are not likely [...]
The company GB Sciences Inc. has obtained the exclusive global worldwide intellectual property license for this innovative solution, which is based on nanotechnology. The researchers Lucía Martín Banderas and Mercedes Fernández Arévalo, from the I+DNanomed research group at the University of Seville, have patented an innovative formulation based on nanotechnology, which is designed to relieve [...]
