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believe could be effective in cases of skin and other cancers without damaging surrounding healthy cells
“Because these nanoparticles are magnetic, we can use an external magnetic field to focus them on the cancer cells. Then, we use a low-power laser to heat them and destroy the cells beneath,” Koy- men said. “Since only the carbon nanoparticles are affected by the laser, the method leaves the healthy tissue unharmed and it is non-toxic.”
Koymen, Mohanty and R.P. Chaudhary, a student in the UT Arlington College of Engineering, developed a way of creating nanoparticles using an electric plasma discharge inside a benzene solution. A pa- per on that discovery was published in December in the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Carbon nanoparticles produced for the cancer study varied from five to 10nm wide.
Mohanty said the carbon nanoparticles can be coa- ted to make them attach to cancer cells once they are positioned in an organ by the magnetic field. He said the new method has several advantages over current technology and could be administered using fiber optics inside the body.
“By using the magnetic field, we can make sure the carbon nanonparticles are not excreted until the near-infrared laser irradiation is finished. They are also crystalline and smaller than carbon nanotubes, which makes for less cell toxicity,” he said. The magnetic carbon nanoparticles also are fluorescent. So they can be used to enhance contrast of optical imaging of tumors along with that of MRI, Mohanty said. Mohanty said lab tests also showed that the carbon nanoparticles and a cw (continuous wave)
12-02 :: February/March 2012
near-infrared laser beam could be used to put a hole in the cell, revealing another potential medical use. “Without killing the cell we can heat it up a little bit and deliver drugs and genes to the cell using low power cw near-infrared laser beam. This is an additional important novelty of our photothermal approach with carbon nanoparticles,” he said.
Ling Gu, Vijaylakshmi Vardarajan, Ali R. Koymen, and Samarendra K. Mohanty: Magnetic-field-assisted photo- thermal therapy of cancer cells using Fe-doped carbon nanoparticles, In: Journal of Biomedical Optics, Volu- me 17, Issue 1, February 06, 2012, Article 018003, DOI:10.1117/1.JBO.17.1.018003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.17.1.018003
New research by a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers important new insights into how droplets form, and ways to pattern the collecting surfaces at the nanoscale to encourage droplets to form more rapidly. These insights could enable a new generation of significantly more ef- ficient power plants and desalination plants, the researchers say.
“We showed that our surfaces improved heat trans- fer up to 71% [compared to flat, non-wetting sur- faces currently used only in high-efficiency conden- ser systems] if you tailor them properly,” researcher Nenad Miljkovic says. With more work to explore