{"52901":{"#nid":"52901","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Using Gold Nanoparticles to Hit Cancer Where It Hurts","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETaking gold nanoparticles to the cancer cell and hitting them with a laser has been shown to be a promising tool in fighting cancer, but what about cancers that occur in places where a laser light can\u2019t reach? Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that by directing gold nanoparticles into the nuclei of cancer cells, they can not only prevent them from multiplying, but can kill them where they lurk. The research appeared as a communication in the February 10 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cWe\u2019ve developed a system that can kill cancer cells by shining light on gold nanoparticles, but what if the cancer is in a place where we can\u2019t shine light on it? To fix that problem, we\u2019ve decorated the gold with a chemical that brings it inside the nucleus of the cancer cell and stops it from dividing,\u201d said Mostafa El-Sayed, Regents professor and director of the Laser Dynamics Laboratory at Georgia Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;Once the cell stops dividing, apoptosis sets in and kills the cell.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cIn cancer, the nucleus divides much faster than that of a normal cell, so if we can stop it from dividing, we can stop the cancer,\u201d said El-Sayed.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;The team tested their hypothesis on cells harvested from cancer of the ear, nose and throat. They decorated the cells with an argininge-glycine-aspartic acide petipde (RGD) to bring the gold nano-particles into the cytoplasm of a cancer cell but not the healthy cells and a nuclear localization signal peptide (NLS) to bring it into the nucleus.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;In previous work they showed that just bringing the gold into the cytoplasm does nothing. In this current study, they found that implanting the gold into the nucleus effectively kills the cell.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cThe cell starts dividing and then it collapses,\u201d said El-Sayed. \u201cOnce you have a cell with two nuclei, it dies.\u201d\u0026nbsp;The gold works by interfering with the cells\u2019 DNA, he added. How that works exactly is the subject of a follow-up study.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cPreviously, we\u2019ve shown that we can bring gold nanoparticles into cancer cells and by shining a light on them, can kill the cells. Now we\u2019ve shown that if we direct those gold nanoparticles into the nucleus, we can kill the cancer cells that are in spots we can\u2019t hit with the light,\u201d said El-Sayed.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;Next the team will test how the treatment works in vivo.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EScientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that by directing gold nanoparticles into the nuclei of cancer cells, they can not only prevent them from multiplying, but can kill them where they lurk.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Implanting cancer with gold nanoparticles stops them from reproducing"}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2010-02-15 09:42:39","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:05:33","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2010-02-15T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2010-02-15T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"140","name":"Cancer Research"},{"id":"141","name":"Chemistry and Chemical Engineering"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"},{"id":"149","name":"Nanotechnology and Nanoscience"}],"keywords":[{"id":"385","name":"cancer"},{"id":"741","name":"el-sayed"},{"id":"2185","name":"gold"},{"id":"742","name":"mostafa"},{"id":"2286","name":"nano"},{"id":"2973","name":"nanoparticles"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}