A new weapon in the war against bad cholesterol

Dr. C Shad Thaxton and Chad A. Mirkin at the Chicago campus of Northwestern University have designed artificial high density lipoprotiens (HPL) nanoparticles that mimic the role of cholesterol. They uptake the bad cholesterol in the body before it can develop into plague which prevents rupture which, in turn, prevents stroke and heart attacks. These artificial nanoparticles are coated in with fats and proteins which allows them to uptake this bad cholesterol and transport it to the liver to be excreted.

It is believed that these nanoparticles can also be used in diagnostics. All they do is implant gold or other metals into the the center of the particles, which allow those particles to show up in medical imaging. This could be used to monitor plague build up in the future.

The researchers at Northwestern have replaced the core in the natural HPL particles with a gold nanoparticle, this allows the particle to bind to cholesterol very tightly. These engineered particles have gone through a first round of testing in a small group of animals and the researchers are ready to move the testing to a larger group of animals.

Willem J. M. Mulder at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan has developed his own version of these nanoparticles that are primarily used for imaging. His main focus is the imaging of artherosclerosis. The gold nanoparticles show up extremely well in computed tomagraphy, a type of imaging.

I chose this article because my family has a history of high cholesterol. I know I'm not for sure going to have it as well but this article gives me hope that there will be a way of tracking or treating of high cholesterol when I get older.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22novel.html?_r=1&ref=research
-Charles Brown