Nano Medicine
Nanotechnology is transforming the science of medicine. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Take a substance like gold, reduce it to tiny nanoparticles, and it acquires new properties, which can be used in a number of ways, including treating cancer. Nina Vance is the associate director of the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology.
Vance: You can make these elongated shaped particles made of gold – gold nanorods – and when you expose those particles to a laser of a certain wavelength those rods vibrate, and when they vibrate they heat up. We’re hoping that in the future you can use gold nanorods as targeted delivery for example to treat cancer. If you’re able to tag these gold nanorods with some kind of antibody or something that will specifically look for cancer cells in your body, then they’re going to tend to concentrate in those regions. Then you expose the person’s body to a certain wavelength of laser, excite those particles and they start vibrating inside your body. So when they’re vibrating, they heat up and destroy the cells around them. If what’s around them is cancer cells well, then you’re treating cancer.
Another nanomaterial being tapped for medical use is nanocellulose.
Vance: Cellulose is something you can find in wood pulp. But now we’re able to break apart those fibers until they are extremely thin – that’s when you get nanocellulose. Nanocellulose is very strong and flexible, but its also very biocompatible because its an organic material. So a lot of researchers are looking at nano cellulose so a lot of researchers are looking into using nano cellulose for um cell regeneration. We can use a nanocellulose scaffold to create the shape of an organ that has been damaged and then grow your cells on top of that scaffold to have the shape of the organ that you want to.
I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.