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Gold Nanoparticles Help Red Blood Cells Deliver Drugs
New submitter MTorrice writes "Scientists decorated red blood cells with gold nanoparticles so they could trigger the cells to dump their contents with a zap from a laser. The laser pulses heated the particles to produce nanopores in the cells' membranes. The cells contained two fluorescent dyes and both flooded through the pores and out of the cells after the laser pulses. Although the researchers studied the release of dyes, their end goal is to use red blood cells as a vehicle for drug delivery, because the cells are naturally compatible with the immune system and circulate for days in the body. Until now, researchers have found easy ways to load the cells with drugs, but the challenge has been to control the molecules' release."
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Thank you to the tireless researcher striving to make this a better world. Your efforts have been noted, Dr. Lil Jon. I knew that grill was for health reasons.
Now you won't be able to deny that rich people get better health care. Us mere mortals won't have gold plated blood.
Do they accept bitcoins?
What a fun thought!
They discovered if you inject cash directly into your bloodstream that you can cure AIDS.
It seems to me this would be best used to get drugs delivered deep within the body, such as in a tumor, without dosing the rest of the body, or even near by areas.
But how do they get the laser there? If it were near the surface, a laser could be used. But deeper in the body, liver, brain, etc., how do you get laser light in there to cause the drug bomb to be dropped?
Quoting TFA:
Mario Magnani, of the University of Urbino, in Italy, calls the method novel and interesting, especially because it appears to leave the red blood cells intact. However, he sees two practical problems: Infrared light doesn’t penetrate deeply into body tissue, making many tumors difficult to access with the technique’s laser.
Wouldn't intersecting focused microwaves be a better approach for heating these blood cells than an infrared laser?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
And my insurance will cover this? Asking if your insurance will cover some new treatment is like asking (a good while back) if a machine would play Crysis or (even further back) if it would run Linux. In case you were wondering, the answer was usually "no".
Interesting, but not at all. Sunshine wouldn't warm the particles enough to perforate the cell. Secondly, and more importantly, if you suddenly dumped a lethal load of drugs inside red blood cells, the person would die 100-120 days later when the lifecycle of those blood cells came to an end. The only way to do what you suggest would be to keep inserting a small quantity daily, so that no single subset of red cells would cause a lethal dose when the cells expire, but allowed for a trigger to release them all at once. Guess that sort of makes your idea really un-workable.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
One Goldschlager please.
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My favorite barten^h^h^h^h^h^htherapist always used to say that Goldschläger worked wonders. Now I know why.
Now available at your local Best Buy (unless it closed down).
Release drugs by a laser shot? It usually takes a handgun or cash for me to release my drugs....
Epitaph: At last! Root access!
Every time I see an article about nanoparticles used in medicine it is always gold. What makes this material particularly suited? Are there other nanoparticle materials used in medical research?
So that's why the local dealer is wearing this huge gold chain!
Elemental gold used to be used to aid in the delivery of anti-arthritic drugs. Obvious to the lab clinician due to the induced poikilocytosis.
their end goal is to use red blood cells as a vehicle for drug delivery
Now they'll have probable cause if the K9's detect that you have red blood cells.
- sarcasm off.
In all seriousness, gold nano particles are being explored medically in some pretty freakin' cool ways - to kill cancer by heating the gold with light, kill cancer by heating the gold radio waves in places where light can't reach and targetted delivery of chemotherapy.
No, but they still need to work out how to breed tiny tiny sharks with tiny tiny frickin' laser beams on their heads to inject into your bloodstream as well
"Just sit and wait here, Mr. Bond, while I fiahrm...start the Therapy-Laser."
"W have found a cure for aids! All you have to do is inject $100,000 directly into your bloodstream"
TFA is about use gold nanoparticles for delivery of any drug. What you have linked to is completely different, using the gold itself as a treatment.
Now we can do the same!
By crossing two or more electromagnetic beams, each of which is of insufficient strength to stimulate the reaction,can one focus the drug's release at the point where they intersect if the combined energy exceeds the required threshold?
This is really cool! My family and I just learned about this from a researcher at the Cincinnati Museum a week ago. They were holding their "Nano Days" event, and this was one of the booths. It turns out that a solution containing gold nano particles in a small enough amount is actually red. She explained the same concepts used in the article, and how gold nano particles can be used to target cancer cells, bind to them, and release a dose of cancel-killing drugs (similar to current chemotherapy) with a laser and/or heat dose. Our 10-year old daughter thought it was quite awesome.
Darn it! I came here for the Xzibit jokes and all I got was Goldschläger references. I'm very disappointed /.
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In the time taken to reply to me you could have found the relevant bit in the article and understood what they have claimed to achieved...