Cancer-Detecting Gold

A new technique of attaching polymer-coated gold nanoparticles to low molecular-weight peptides is proving more useful than current techniques in finding certain tumour cells floating around in the bloodstream.

The gold particles, which are embedded with dyes allowing their detection by laser spectroscopy, could enhance this technique’s specificity by reducing the number of false positives.

Researchers show that polymer-coated and dye-studded gold particles, directly linked to a growth factor peptide rather than an antibody, can detect circulating tumor cells in the blood of patients with head and neck cancer....

Upon laser illumination, the particles display a sharp fingerprint-like pattern that is specific to the dye, because the gold enhances the signal coming from the dyes.

In collaboration with oncologists at Winship Cancer Institute, researchers used nanoparticles to test for CTCs in blood samples from 19 patients with head and neck cancer. Of these patients, 17 had positive signals for CTCs in their blood. The two with low signals were verified to have no circulating cells by a different technique.

The more they're studied, the more uses are found for gold nanoparticles. Soon, these nanoparticles will be part of the standard armoury in cancer detection and even cancer fighting.