Posts Tagged ‘gold nanoparticles’
-
February 17th, 2010
NanoComposix – innovating solutions
Regular readers have probably worked out by now that we love to see gold being used in innovative and useful ways. The San Diego-based outfit NanoComposix are achieving just this, with a number of exciting R&D programmes running alongside their core business of supplying high specification nanoparticles to industry.
The company’s R&D programme is particularly robust, with a number of different projects currently ongoing. One which caught my eye was the use of gold nanoparticle matrices for MALDI-MS tissue imaging. This work has the potential to enhance the detection, identification, and analysis of small biomolecules directly from tissue surfaces.
If anyone reading wants to get in touch with the company feel free to contact me, or go to them directly.
-
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!
-
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.
-
January 27th, 2010
Nanopartz expansion
Nanopartz, the US-based company who specialise in the production and supply of gold nanoparticles, are planning on expanding their operations and staff headcount significantly over the next 5 years having recently moved into new purpose-built facilities in Loveland, CO. I was fortunate enough to have a tour of the new labs at the end of last year, and was impressed by the facilities which incorporate both new R&D labs and a large production area.
We’ve blogged before about some of the great products Nanopartz have developed – take a look at their catalogue for a full list.
-
January 18th, 2010
Gold nanoparticle review
A really nice review articlehas appeared in the surface science journal Langmuir which charts recent developments in the synthesis, electrochemistry, and optical properties of gold nanoparticles. This paper has already appeared in the journal’s most read article list for the past 12 months, testament to its popularity. Indeed, of the 20 papers listed 7 are gold-based making Langmuir a great source of information on gold nanoparticles.
-
December 1st, 2009
Introduction
Hello ‘gold-minded blog readers’,
This being my first post I would like to introduce myself and my interests with respect to gold.
My name is Jonathan Edgar. I am a PhD student at the University of Technology, Sydney.
My work revolves around the synthesis and characterisation of gold nanoparticles with different geometries (e.g. nanorods, nanoshells, stars etc)
If you are interested or want to investigate other research being undertaken within our institute, check out http://www.nano.uts.edu.au/
Shameless self-promotion aside, I did stumble across a way for gold researchers to capitalise on the potential explosion of uses for graphene (oxides etc);
Jasuja, K.; Berry, V. ACS Nano 2009, 3, 2358-2366.
The paper above details the tailoring of the electrical properties of sheets of graphene oxide by seeding the growth of gold “nanosnowflakes” upon functional groups (COOH and OH) on the sheets.
-
November 3rd, 2009
Platinum, gold and fighting cancer
Many of you will probably have heard of Cisplatin, which is an effective platinum-based chemotherapy drug used in the treatment of a range of cancers. As with many cancer drugs, it does have a number of side-effects which can limit its use so ways of improving its delivery, and potentially lessening any side-effects, have long been sought.
This paper, recently published in JACS, describes attempts to do just that. The team, which was led by Chad Mirkin at Northwestern and Stephen Lippard at MIT, have attached a cisplatin prodrug to gold nanoparticles. The action of introducing these nanoparticles into cancer cells facilitated the reductive release of cisplatin from the prodrug, and the subsequent formation of a highly cytotoxic platinum complex. In some cases this complex was shown to be more cytotoxic than cisplatin alone, with the added bonus of having reduced platinum-associated toxicity.
-
September 25th, 2009
Measuring mercury with gold
The guys at AZoNanotechnology have recently published a series of thought-leadership articles from leading nanotechnology experts around the world. All of these articles are well worth a read if you get the chance, but one in particular caught my eye…
Professor Suresh Bhargava, Dean of the School of Applied Sciences at RMIT University and leader of the Industrial Chemistry Group, has written a piece on the use of nanotechnology to measure mercury. The World Gold Council is heavily involved in this area, and have recently announced funding of a project in collaboration with Chris Hardacre at the University of Belfast (see a previous blog from Richard on the announcement here). It seems that Professor Bhargava and his team have developed a gold nanoparticle-based sensor, allowing the accurate measurement of mercury. This technology is now being further developed with industrial partners for pilot plant trials…Part of this work has been published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B.
-
September 10th, 2009
Cancer nanomedicine efforts bolstered with $2.3M grant
I wrote a blog in August about an excellent nature nanotechnology paper from Vladamir Zharov’s team at the University of Arkansas which detailed their development of gold-coated carbon nanotubes, and the potential diagnostic and therapeutic applications of such materials. Now it has been announced that Professor Zharov and colleagues have been awarded a number of grants totalling $2.3M to continue their groundbreaking work in the field of cancer nanomedicine. Approximately half of the money has been earmarked for pre-clinical and clinical studies investigating the diagnosis of deadly breast cancer metastasis in its earliest stages using gold nanoparticle based technologies.
Congratulations to Professor Zharov and team on this significant award.
-
September 8th, 2009
Sourcing gold nanoparticles
As I mentioned on the blog a couple of weeks ago I attended the Nanoparticles 2009 meeting in Liverpool last week. I enjoyed the diverse programme which included papers and posters detailing novel uses of nanoparticles in a range of fields including healthcare, materials, sensors and analysis.
Naturally I was excited to see a considerable amount of gold-related research presented. Many of the delegates I spoke to were particularly interested in the recent advances in the synthesis of gold nanoparticles of specific shapes and sizes. Richard highlighted the progress made by Nanopartz in a recent post, whilst utilisegold.com has a directory of companies offering gold nanoparticulates in numerous forms.
Please feel free to get in touch with us if you require a specific type of gold nanoparticle – we may well be able to help!
Trevor Keel
Jonathan Edgar
Recent comments: