Nanoparticles News and Research

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Researchers develop new inexpensive way of filtering water with silver nanoparticles

Disasters such as floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes often result in the spread of diseases like gastroenteritis, giardiasis and even cholera because of an immediate shortage of clean drinking water. Now, chemistry researchers at McGill University have taken a key step towards making a cheap, portable, paper-based filter coated with silver nanoparticles to be used in these emergency settings.

24 Feb 2011

Nanoparticle therapy may improve survival after life-threatening blood loss

In an advance that could improve battlefield and trauma care, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have used tiny particles called nanoparticles to improve survival after life-threatening blood loss.

23 Feb 2011

New nanoparticle can help develop vaccines against HIV, malaria

MIT engineers have designed a new type of nanoparticle that could safely and effectively deliver vaccines for diseases such as HIV and malaria.

23 Feb 2011

Silver nanoparticle coated 'killer paper' for food packaging

Scientists are reporting development and successful lab tests of "killer paper," a material intended for use as a new food packaging material that helps preserve foods by fighting the bacteria that cause spoilage. The paper, described in ACS's journal, Langmuir, contains a coating of silver nanoparticles, which are powerful anti-bacterial agents.

17 Feb 2011

Tiny gold particles can help doctors detect CTCs in blood of patients with head, neck cancer

Tiny gold particles can help doctors detect tumor cells circulating in the blood of patients with head and neck cancer, researchers at Emory and Georgia Tech have found.

14 Feb 2011

Key advance in development of fast, simple test for detection of cholera

With cholera on the rampage in Haiti and almost 40 other countries, scientists are reporting the development of a key advance that could provide a fast, simple test to detect the toxin that causes the disease. The report appears in ACS' journal Bioconjugate Chemistry. Cholera affects more than 200,000 people annually, mainly in developing countries, and causes about 5,000 deaths. Many involve infants, children, and the elderly.

10 Feb 2011

Protein cross-linking enzymes in foods can affect physiological characteristics

Protein modification via enzymatic cross-linking is an attractive way for altering food structure so as to create products with increased quality and nutritional value. These modifications are expected to affect not only the structure and physico-chemical properties of proteins but also their physiological characteristics, such as digestibility in the GI-tract and allergenicity.

10 Feb 2011

Anti-cancer drug tied to golden missiles

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a little bomb that promises a big bang for cancer patients.

5 Feb 2011

NIST team demonstrates a method for controlling different-sized nanoparticle production

The same properties that make engineered nanoparticles attractive for numerous applications-small as a virus, biologically and environmentally stabile, and water-soluble-also cause concern about their long-term impacts on environmental health and safety.

3 Feb 2011

Losartan improves effectiveness of nanotherapeutics against cancer

Low doses of an inexpensive, FDA-approved hypertension medication may improve the results of nanotherapeutic approaches to cancer treatment. In a report in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators describe experiments showing that the generic drug losartan, by modifying the network of collagen fibers that characterizes most solid tumors, improved the effectiveness of two nanotherapeutics against several types of cancer.

3 Feb 2011

Researchers design nanoparticles that make blood clots visible to CT scanner

For almost two decades, cardiologists have searched for ways to see dangerous blood clots before they cause heart attacks. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report that they have designed nanoparticles that find clots and make them visible to a new kind of X-ray technology.

3 Feb 2011

Nanotechnology and nanotoxicology

The rapid development of nanotechnology has increased fears about the health risks of nano-objects. Are these fears justified? Do we need a new discipline, nanotoxicology, to evaluate the risks? Empa scientists Harald F. Krug and Peter Wick discuss these questions in the new edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie.

2 Feb 2011

Bioengineers and physician-scientists zap tumors with light-activated nanoparticles

Rice University bioengineers and physician-scientists at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have successfully destroyed tumors of human brain cancer cells in the first animal tests of a minimally invasive treatment that zaps glioma tumors with heat. The tests involved nanoshells, light-activated nanoparticles that are designed to destroy tumors with heat and avoid the unwanted side effects of drug and radiation therapies.

2 Feb 2011

Nanosilver used in medications as early as 1889

Nanosilver is not a new discovery by nanotechnologists - it has been used in various products for over a hundred years, as is shown by a new Empa study. The antimicrobial effects of minute silver particles, which were then known as "colloidal silver", were known from the earliest days of its use.

1 Feb 2011

FDA approves 'Cornell Dots' for first clinical trial in humans to diagnose cancer

"Cornell Dots" - brightly glowing nanoparticles - may soon be used to light up cancer cells to aid in diagnosing and treating cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first clinical trial in humans of the new technology.

1 Feb 2011

Silicon dioxide coated rust nanoparticles to fight cervical cancer

The next big thing in medical diagnostics could be minutes particles of rust, iron oxide, coated with the material from which sand is formed, silicon dioxide. These magnetic nanoparticles, a mere 29 to 230 nanometers across, can be used to trap antibodies to the virus that causes cervical cancer and to the bacteria that causes potentially lethal diarrhea.

1 Feb 2011

Warwick research opens new strategy in vehicle design for drug release

The ability of some forms of plankton and bacteria to build an extra natural layer of nanoparticle-like armour has inspired chemists at the University of Warwick to devise a startlingly simple way to give drug bearing polymer vesicles (microscopic polymer based sacs of liquid) their own armoured protection.

31 Jan 2011

Magnetic nanoparticles for ovarian cancer treatment

A paper published in the January issue of the journal Nanomedicine could provide the foundation for a new ovarian cancer treatment option - one that would use an outside-the-body filtration device to remove a large portion of the free-floating cancer cells that often create secondary tumors.

28 Jan 2011

Scientists develop copper-coated silica nanoparticles for odor removal

Scientists are reporting development of a new approach for dealing with offensive household and other odors - one that doesn't simply mask odors like today's room fresheners, but eliminates them at the source.

27 Jan 2011

MGH investigators develop novel system to deliver growth factors to chronic wounds

Massachusetts General Hospital investigators have developed a novel system for delivery of growth factors to chronic wounds such as pressure sores and diabetic foot ulcers.

27 Jan 2011