Fighting Cancer and Ebola with Nanoparticles

Nanotechnologies, the manipulation of matter at a molecular and even atomic scale to penetrate living cells, shows promise of opening a new front against deadly conditions from cancer to Ebola.

According to Dr Thomas Webster, the chair of chemical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, research into medical nanotechnology is gaining pace and the medical establishment is starting to sit up and pay attention.

At the core of the technology is the ability to attach drugs, and in some cases metals and minerals, to nanoparticles that would then bind themselves to life threatening cancer cells or viruses.

Dr Webster's team is developing methods to attach gold nanoparticles to cancer cells.

Infrared light would then heat up the nanoparticles, killing the cancer cells with heat but leaving the healthy cells alive to do their job.

"This technology has been studied for the better part of a decade, but we're looking at ways of making it better," Dr Webster stated. "One that we've created in the lab we've called 'nanostars.'

"A star shape has a lot more surface area, so they can kill cancer cells faster than a nanosphere because they heat up faster. "Even if it's carrying a drug, a star has a lot more surface area on which to attach it, it's got a different morphology."

 Dr Webster said that research into nanoparticle selenium -- an essential trace mineral in the human die, as a nano-scaled tool in the fight against cancer was the latest avenue of study.

"Selenium is a natural part of our diet, but we've made nanoparticles of selenium that we're seeing in the same way as we've seen with gold and infrared, having the ability to kill cancer cells and kill bacteria and at the same time not have any toxicity problems you might see with anti-bacterials like silver."