GOLD-coated glass “nanoshells” can reveal the location of tumours and then destroy them minutes later in a burst of heat.
Using these particles to detect and destroy tumours could speed up cancer treatment and reduce the use of potentially toxic drugs. It could also make treatment cheaper, says Andre Gobin of Rice University in Houston, Texas, who helped to create the particles.
In 2003 Gobin’s supervisor Jennifer West showed that gold-coated silica nanospheres could destroy tumours in mice, while leaving normal tissue intact. The blood vessels surrounding tumours are leakier than those in healthy tissue, so spheres injected into the bloodstream tend to accumulate at tumour…
