“Nano Cocktail”

A “cocktail” of different nanometer-sized particles which can be used to target and kill cancerous tumours have been developed by researchers in California and Massachusetts. “’This study represents the first example of the benefits of employing a cooperative nanosystem to fight cancer,’ said Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the primary author of a paper describing the results, which is being published in a forthcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their study, the UC San Diego chemists, bioengineers at MIT and cell biologists at UC Santa Barbara developed a system containing two different nanomaterials the size of only a few nanometers, or a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, that can be injected into the bloodstream. One nanomaterial was designed to find and adhere to tumors in mice, while the second nanomaterial was fabricated to kill those tumors.”