Nanoparticles

Chemotherapy drugs are effective at killing cancer cells – but they’re also pretty good at killing healthy cells. Making these drugs more selective for tumors is a key area of research, and now a team at ETH Zurich has found a way to keep a common treatment – platinum nanoparticles – on target.

The first step in many cancer treatments is to surgically remove the tumor, however this often isn’t enough. As long as a few cancer cells remain the tumors often grow back, but a new innovative spray gel, administered onto a cancerous site during surgery, may help prevent the tumors recurring.

​If you need to close up an injury or incision in human body tissue, you use sutures, staples or a surgical adhesive … right? Well, if technology that's currently being developed at Arizona State University gets commercialized, liquid silk combined with gold may eventually be a better way to go.

Found in warm freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs, Naegleria fowleri enters a person's body through their nose, then proceeds to kill them by eating their brain. Infections are rare, fortunately, and they may also soon be more treatable thanks to the use of silver nanoparticles.

The blood-brain barrier is an effective shield against infection, but it’s not so helpful when you’re trying to get drugs in there. Nasal sprays could bypass the barrier, and now researchers have developed a way to use ultrasound pulses to drive the drugs to where in the brain they’re needed.

To avoid a future where once-routine procedures become life-threatening again, new ways to fight bacteria need to be developed. A new study has now shown oxygen can be weaponized against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, by way of nanoparticles activated by light.

Regardless of what you may think of the practise of teeth-whitening, it appears to not just be a passing fad – and it can harm peoples' teeth. Scientists from China's Nanchang University are out to make it safer, with an experimental new technique.

A fascinating cancer detection technique has been developed by scientists at Stanford University. The process involves a small magnetic wire being inserted into a vein where it attracts free-floating tumor cells in the blood.

Researchers at CNBP have developed a new targeted treatment for cancer. Chemotherapy drugs are wrapped in “nano-bubbles” called liposomes, which are then injected into the desired part of the body and made to release their payload on demand, by applying X-ray radiation.

Scientists are coming up with some creative ways to fight cancer. Researchers at the University at Buffalo have developed new kinds of nanoparticles that can infiltrate, heat up and kill cancer cells more effectively and efficiently than similar methods.

​A remarkable new study has successfully used the CRISPR gene editing system to edit a specific gene in mice engineered to have fragile X syndrome, a disorder often related to autism. The single gene edit in the live mice resulted in significant improvements in repetitive and obsessive behaviors​.

​Chameleons change color via a layer of skin cells which contain nanocrystals. As the lizards stretch or relax their skin, the spacing between those crystals changes, altering the manner in which they reflect light. Now, scientists have designed a color-changing nanolaser that works the same way.