Why 'soot' could be the key to delivering drugs to cancer cells
Nano-scale tubes made of carbon could be used to safely penetrate human cells and deliver anti-cancer medicines or modified DNA molecules for gene therapy. Although there is a long way to go before the concept can undergo medical trials, a team led by Dr. Sofia Pascu at the University of Bath has shown how these tubes could be used as a cargo carrier, to break through the outer membranes of cells that some useful therapeutic molecules would otherwise be unable to enter. The tubes, which are just a billionth of a metre long, can occur naturally, in candle soot for example. They could also be used to carry imaging agents such as fluorescent tags and radionuclides (radioactive isotopes widely used in therapy and diagnosis) that would make it possible to obtain better images of cells and tissues and so aid earlier detection of cancers.