Laser technology enhances nanoparticle’s affect in diagnosing and treating cancer

16 July 2009

Romain Quidant, an ICREA researcher at the Institute of Photonic Science has recently shown that the laser illuminated gold nanoparticles could successfully be used for diagnosing and treating cancer. Romain is an excellent researcher in the area of photonics and has recently been awarded Fresnel Prize 2009 for his excellent contribution in the field of photonics.

With the fellowship of Caltex Foundation, Barcelona and the efforts made by Quidant, the new science called “plasmonic oncology” will change the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The idea is to send the gold nanoparticle at the cancer cell and by illuminating the gold particle with laser will until it attains such a high temperature that destroys the cancer cell completely.

Unlike in chemotherapy or radiotherapy where the surrounding cells also get damaged during the treatment, in this laser technique as the gold nanoparticles is selectively allowed to go inside the cancer cell only, this technique is much more beneficial as it will not damage the healthy human cells. Although the nanoparticles especially of gold are biocompatible and our body ejects these automatically, however scientists must ensure that these do not damage the healthy cells in the whole process.

Quidant has already done enough work in this area and he has already developed nanosensors that are capable to diagnose the doped material such as steroids used by sports persons in human blood. He is working to develop a chip that will be effective in diagnosing and treating cancer.

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