Archive for the ‘Biomedical’ Category
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March 5th, 2010
Video perspectives
The American Chemical Society’s journal Physical Chemistry Letters has a nice series of video perspectives on papers it has recently published. This one, for example, features reseachers from Jin Zhong Zhang’s lab at CalTech speaking about their article Biomedical Applications of Shape-Controlled Plasmonic Nanostructures: A Case Study of Hollow Gold Nanospheres for Photothermal Ablation Therapy of Cancer.
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March 3rd, 2010
Anticancer gold complexes
The current issue of Chemistry – A European Journal leads with a nice paper entitled ”Stable Anticancer Gold(III)-Porphyrin Complexes: Effects of Porphyrin Structure”. Gold complexes have long been investigated as potential treatments of a variety of ailments, and this paper represents some of the very latest research in the field. A full abstract can be found here. -
February 12th, 2010
Gold for good – a new article from the WGC
Yesterday we released a new publication written by the World Gold Council and Cientifica called ‘Gold for good – gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation’. The article, which is freely available on both the WGC and Cientifica websites, discusses the past, present and future of gold-based nanotechnology, focusing on key areas in medicine, the environment and technology.I am attending the 2010 Nanotech Japan event in Tokyo next week where I will be launching the article, and will follow this with a trip to the ACS spring meeting in California towards the end of March. Feel free to drop me a line if you are attending either event, I’d be happy to discuss any aspect of the WGCs activities, including our funding and investment programmes.
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February 8th, 2010
Gold nanoparticles and theranostics
Theranostics is a term which many of you may not be familiar with, but it describes much sought after combinations of diagnostic and therapeutic processes. Traditionally, diagnostics and therapeutics are quite separate – if you are feeling unwell, you will visit your GP who will diagnose your illness (with a blood test, for example) and then prescribe the relevant treatment. Combining these two activities offers considerable benefits – speed of treatment, improved patient management/compliance and cost. Examples of theranostics currently on the market include Genentech’s Herceptin and Novartis’ Gleevec.
With this in mind I was fascinated to read this paper, recently published in the journal Nanotechnology. The team, working in the US and Europe, report the development of so-called ‘plasmonic nanobubbles’ (PNBs). These PNBs are effectively tunable and transient probes based around gold nanoparticles. The authors describe how such nanobubbles may potentially be used in 1) non-invasive imaging , 2) controlled-release, intra-cellular delivery and 3) selective and guided cell and tissue damage – true ‘theranostic’ potential!
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February 1st, 2010
Heart of gold?
The University of South Carolina has just released a fascinating press release detailing three of their researchers work investigating how injections of nano-sized rods of gold might improve the function of faulty heart valves while eliminating the need for corrective surgery. The work, which has been supported by a two-year exploratory grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, focuses on on the structural protein collagen. The amount of collagen within heart valves alters their mechnical properties – for example too much collagen leads to the valves becoming stiff and not functioning correctly. The team believe that the gold nanoparticles can alter the mechanical properties of the collagen in beneficial ways, and we will watch the outcome of their work with interest.
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December 29th, 2009
Nice nanomedicine blog
I came across this really nice post written by Aaron Saenz and thought I would mention here. He has commented on the recently released NIH roadmap to nanomedicine, which outlines how millions of dollars in funding can be awarded to key centres around the USA to promote frontiers of nanotechnology used to cure human illness. He has supplemented this with lots of nice links to interesting gold nanotechnology research around the USA – including a couple of nice youtube offerings… Well worth a look!
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December 21st, 2009
New Book – Gold Science and Applications
I’m excited to announce that a new book ‘Gold – Science and Applications’ has now been published.
There have been many excellent books written on certain aspects of the science and technology of gold, most notably the book of the Hanau gold conference, held in 1996 (“Gold. Progress in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Technology”, edited by Hubert Schmidbaur and published in 1999) and there are several new books covering specific sectors of gold science e.g. on catalysis, chemistry and nanotechnology (see here). However, for those seeking a broader reference source on gold and covering all technical sectors, the most appropriate book on gold, Gold Usage by Bill Rapson and Theo Groenewald, was published over 30 years ago in 1978. The world of gold has changed considerably since then. A few years ago Chris Corti and I believed it was time for an updated book that reflects the more recent developments.
With the co-operation of some of the leading experts in their field, we have attempted to produce a book that is a worthy successor to ‘Rapson’ and to provide an authoritive source of information. We have attempted to cover all the main scientific areas as well as the main areas of application. In some cases this has required some very detailed scientific chapters; other fields require less specific detail and have focused more on the practical application. In addition, to help readers place this science and technology in the context of a much wider gold market, a chapter on the supply, demand and pricing of gold is included. Taken together, our aim for the book is to appeal to both those working in academia and industry.
If you are interested, your can read more and purchase it here .
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December 11th, 2009
Medical nanotechnologies making strides
Two recent press releases have illustrated the ongoing progress of nanotechnology in the fields of therapeutics and diagnostics. In the first AuraSense LLC, the company spun out of Northwestern University by Chad Mirkin, has raised $2.5 million in funding to commercialise technology that employs gold nanoparticles to help treat cardiovascular disease.
The second release details the progress of MagForce Nanotechnologies, which has culminated in the German organisation applying for European regulatory approval of its Nano-Cancer® therapy. This therapy allows the targeted destruction of tumors using superparamagnetic nanoparticles to generate heat.
Both of these announcements are exciting, and illustrate tangible progress in the commercialisation of medical nanotechnologies. We are looking forward to seeing plenty more positive reports of this sort in the coming months!
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November 20th, 2009
A couple of things catching the eye today….
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November 9th, 2009
New home for medical gold research?
Interesting local news story in the US, suggesting that a new integrated medical research facility in Texas might be the new home of CytImmune Sciences, the company developing gold nanoparticle-based anticancer drug delivery technology. The research centre could also include studies on early-stage Alzheimer’s using gold nanoparticles according to the article.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
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