Gold nanorods hitch ride on immune cells that target breast tumors
Friday, August 17, 2012 - 07:10
in Health & Medicine
One of the challenges in treating cancer, whether using nanotechnology or not, is that tumors can often be inaccessible to the therapies designed to kill them. Mostafa El-Sayed, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his colleagues are attempting to overcome this obstacle by designing drug-loaded gold nanorods that attract the attention of tumor-associated immune cells known as macrophages. The researchers believe that these macrophages will then deliver the nanorods to the tumors, crossing the normally impermeable blood-brain barrier to do so.