Cancer Cure News Update 2017: Gold Nanoparticles Can Help Increase Effectivity of Lung Cancer Treatments
The fight to cure cancer has never been this luxurious.
A new study from the scientists in Edinburgh UK shows that little flecks of gold can be used to help boost the effectiveness of lung cancer treatments.
Minimal gold quantities, also known as gold nanoparticles, were wrapped in a chemical device that was used by the research team to prove their point.
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"We have discovered new properties of gold that were previously unknown and our findings suggest that the metal could be used to release drugs inside tumours very safely," Dr. Asier Unciti-Broceta from the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Edinburgh Centre of the University of Edinburgh said in a statement.
The researcher also admitted that there is still a lot of work to be done before they can completely advise lung cancer patients to go through a treatment that uses gold nanoparticles. However, the team still believe that their study could be a significant step toward the creation of a similar device that could be used by surgeons to activate the properties of chemotherapy directly in cancer tumors to further lessen the harmful effects of the treatment to the body's healthy organs.
On the other hand, senior science information officer Dr. Aine McCarthy of the Cancer Research UK said that the study could shed a new light to the current cancer treatments. "The next steps will be to see if this method is safe to use in people, what its long- and short-term side effects are, and if it's a better way to treat some cancers," McCarthy stated.
The study was conducted in collaboration with the researches from the University of Zaragoza's Institute of Nanoscience of Aragon in Spain with funds coming from the CRUK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
The study was first published on the Angewandte Chemie journal.
