Medicine Man

Researchers from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute in Basel have developed a rapid method to detect the activity of a gene involved in controlling tumor growth.

A new analysis of the Federal government’s efforts to study the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) implications of nanotechnology concludes that sound management will play as important a role as good science when it comes to addressing these concerns.

In an attempt to determine what factors make one nanoparticle better than another at targeting tumors, a team of investigators in Korea have conducted a systematic tumor-targeting study of a variety of self-assembling nanoparticles.

Quantum dots, used increasingly as bright fluorescent markers in basic research and diagnostic assays, must be coated, or capped, with one of a wide variety of organic molecules in order to stabilize these nanocrystals and prevent them from aggregating when added to water.

Though gene therapies hold great promise for treating cancer, it has proven difficult to deliver therapeutic genes efficiently into cancer cells.