Gold Nanoparticles Used for Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Gold nanoparticles have been created that are capable of identifying marker proteins on breast cancer cells.

The tiny particles could be used as a tool to diagnose and treat cancer. The technology would be approximately three times cheaper than the most common current method and has the potential to provide many times the quantity and quality of data.

The gold nanoparticles, or nanorods, are tiny rod-shaped gold particles, even smaller than viruses, which are equipped with antibodies designed to bind to a specific marker on cell surfaces. Scientists analyze these surface markers or proteins on a cell's exterior, because they can contain valuable information about what type of cell they belong to and/or the state of that cell.

Joseph Irudayaraj, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN, USA), said, We hope that this technology will soon play a critical role in early detection and monitoring of breast cancer. Professor Irudayaraj is the leader of the team that developed the method for fabricating the nanoparticles.

In a study published in the June 29, 2007, issue of Nano Letters, Prof. Irudayaraj showed that the nanorods, when combined with a special imaging technique, were capable of recognizing cancer stem cells by binding to known markers on their exterior. Cancer stem cells are important to detect because they are particularly invasive and more likely than other types of cancer cells to spread, or metastasize, to other organs. These and other types of cells the technology utilizes are obtained from blood tests as opposed to biopsies.

The nanoparticles, or gold nanorod molecular probes, are fabricated so that their size is unique to their target marker. That way, when nanorods bind to their marker, they scatter, or disrupt light in a characteristic manner that researchers can then pair to the nanorod's dimensions, its antibody and the target cancer marker, which must be present for binding to occur.


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