Cancer Targeting Nanocoral Sensors

Scientists and biomedical engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed smart nanoprobes that hopefully, once further tested, will be used in the fight against cancer. The primary objective of these nanoprobes is to allow the direct targeting of cancer cells in order to prevent some of the disastrous affects that chemo has on the healthy cells of the body. These nanoprobes not only can detect and latch onto cancerous cells, but they also were developed to send signals that can inform the scientists monitoring them whether or not the treatment is working.

The probes are tiny, a few hundred nanometers in diameter, and easily can attach to cancer cells which are about 100 times as large. The research team drew the main idea for their design from natural sea corals which use rough surfaces to enhance the capture of light and food particles, which is why they decided to name these nanoprobes “nanocoral”. The overall design of the nanocoral consists of roughened gold on one side and a smooth polystyrene on the other. The smooth polystyrene side is tailored by attaching specific antibodies which will be attracted to the cancer cells desired. These antibodies will bind to the target cancer cells and then the roughened gold side will sense changes on the cancer cell’s surface and relays it to the scientists through a technique called surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). SERS uses the fact that molecules produce oscillations that resonate with specific frequencies when exposed to laser light, allowing the scientists to recognize and monitor everything taking place on the surface.

The research is currently in the early stages of development but they have demonstrated the concept on human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2), a well-known target generally expressed heavily in aggressive forms of breast cancer. It was demonstrated how the probes could attach and relay their location when the HER-2 receptors were present, whereas under a control experiment the probes did not send a signal back since they were not attached to anything. This technology could potentially allow us the ability to not only deliver a drug to cancer cells specifically, but also to get real-time responses from the probes at a sub-cellular level.

The full article can be found at the following link: http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8261.