New Nanoparticle Could Provide Simple Early Diagnosis Of Many Diseases

Researchers have created a new nanoparticle that could someday act as a virtually all-purpose diagnostic tool to detect many inflammatory diseases in their earliest stages, including heart disease, Alzheimer's, and arthritis. The specially-designed nanoparticles seek out hydrogen peroxide (thought to be overproduced in trace amounts in the early stages of most diseases that involve some sort of chronic inflammation in the body), and emit light when they encounter it.

Comments

so

[JeanBaptiste]

if I see anyone glowing I'll avoid them. I've been doing that anyways....

Cancer Test

[MyLongNickName]

1. Inject billions of nanoparticles into lungs
2. Proclaim person has pre-cancer
3. Be right 100% of the time.
4. Profit!

I have some early detection tests too!

[UbuntuDupe]

Here are mine:

1) Heart disease: You can't fit your lardass into an airplane seat.

2) Alzheimer's: Grandma asks the name of the TV show three times within ten minutes.

3) Arthritis: You're better at DDR than Guitar Hero. :-/

Re:Finally a foolproof test

[wolfgang_spangler]

I'd rather just check the carpet and I'll let you know.

those clever scientists....

[tbischel]

"Researchers have created a new nanoparticle that could someday act as a virtually all-purpose diagnostic tool to detect many inflammatory diseases..."
We can do anything now that science has invented magic

The actual reference...

[kebes]

The press release from Georgia Tech has a bit more information. The paper of this work will appear in the October issue of Nature Materials, but is already available online (for subscribers only, unfortunately):
In vivo imaging of hydrogen peroxide with chemiluminescent nanoparticles Dongwon Lee, Sirajud Khaja, Juan C. Velasquez-Castano, Madhuri Dasari, Carrie Sun, John Petros, W. Robert Taylor & Niren Murthy. Published online: 19 August 2007; doi:10.1038/nmat1983

The paper describes the advantages of their nanoparticles:

The peroxalate nanoparticles have several attractive properties for in vivo imaging, such as tunable wavelength emission (460-630 nm), nanomolar sensitivity for hydrogen peroxide and excellent specificity for hydrogen peroxide over other reactive oxygen species.

In the paper, they demonstrate the use of this photo-marker in live mice, and are able to image the location of hydrogen peroxide anywhere in the mouse body. An obvious question regarding the technique is the toxicity of the nanoparticles. They do not discuss this in the paper (it will probably be the subject of an upcoming study), but the particles are ester polymers, with embedded dye (a pentacene derivative). So they are not using heavy-metal nanoparticles: these are peroxalate polymers. I'm not an expert in biocompatibility, but from the chemical structure, I wouldn't expect it to be highly toxic (it probably even degrades in the body).

Obviously a detailed toxicity study would be required before use in humans. However it's possible that it could be rapidly adapted to ex-situ diagnostics (e.g. on tissue explants) and then be adapted to live in-situ imaging if/when it is determined to be safe.

Re:Sounds like nonsense

[kebes]

In the actual paper, they mention:

The overproduction of hydrogen peroxide is implicated in the development of numerous diseases 1-4 and there is currently great interest in developing contrast agents that can image hydrogen peroxide in vivo.

and:

The overproduction of hydrogen peroxide is implicated in the development of numerous inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and liver hepatitis 23-27.

The implicated references, if you care, are:

1. Lim, S. D. et al. Increased Nox1 and hydrogen peroxide in prostate cancer. Prostate 62, 200-207 (2005).
2. Chang, M. C. Y., Pralle, A., Isacoff, E. Y. & Chang, C. J. A selective, cell-permeable optical probe for hydrogen peroxide in living cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 15392-15393 (2004).
3. Miller, E.W., Albers, A. E., Pralle, A., Isacoff, E. Y. & Chang, C. J. Boronate-based fluorescent probes for imaging cellular hydrogen peroxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 16652-16659 (2005).
4. Albers, A. E., Okreglak, V. S. & Chang, C. J. A FRET-based approach to ratiometric fluorescence detection of hydrogen peroxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 9640-9641 (2006).
23. Polytarchou, C., Hatziapostolou, M. & Papadimitriou, E. Hydrogen peroxide stimulates proliferation and migration of human prostate cancer cells through activation of activator protein-1 and up-regulation of the heparin affin regulatory peptide gene. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 40428-40435 (2005).
24. Laurent, A. et al. Controlling tumor growth by modulating endogenous production of reactive oxygen species. Cancer Res. 65, 948-956 (2005).
25. Stone, J. R. & Collins, T. The role of hydrogen peroxide in endothelial proliferative responses. Endothelium-New York 9, 231-238 (2002).
26. Mohler, D. L. & Shell, T. A. The hydrogen peroxide induced enhancement of DNA cleavage in the ambient light photolysis of CpFe(CO)(2)Ph: A potential strategy for targeting cancer cells. Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 15, 4585-4588 (2005).
27. Hirpara, J. L., Clement, M. V. & Pervaiz, S. Intracellular acidification triggered by mitochondrial-derived hydrogen peroxide is an effector mechanism for drug-induced apoptosis in tumor cells. J. Biol. Chem. 276, 514-521 (2001).

I'm not an expert in these matters, but looking over the paper, it seems that there is considerable interest in this diagnostic technique for a variety of conditions. (The fact that it was published in a high-profile journal like Nature Materials is already a good indication.)

Re:What I can't wait for is

[Rakishi]

Bacteria and viruses evolve, very very quickly in some cases. There is a reason the immune system can't stop all infections despite it's rather interesting complexity. The worst effect is of course false positives, losing all your neurons to a confused nanobot is not a fun thing.