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"We want to use this technology for early cancer detection, so that we can detect a very small tumor the size of a millimeter," says Xiaohu Gao, PhD, post-doctorate fellow, Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
The researchers injected mice with nanoparticles called quantum dots, which were chemically linked to monoclonal antibodies and used to detect the prostate-specific membrane antigen on the cell surface of the tumors in the living mice. The simultaneous targeting and imaging of the tumor by the quantum dots can be seen using a mercury lamp. The quantum dots, made of cadmium selenide, were coated with a highly protective coating, ABC triblock polymer, and injected into the circulatory system of the mice. The coating is used to solve two problems: to keep the toxicity of the cadmium selenide dots from harming the body and to prevent the body from harming the dots, causing dimming of the dots' effects.
"Initially, this will allow us to limit cancer growth in living animal models at a higher sensitivity," says Shuming Nie, PhD, director of cancer nanotechnology, Winship Cancer Institute, and associate professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, hematology, and oncology, Wallace Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology. "It probably can be used to monitor the treatment of therapeutic drugs and it is possible that there is going to be something in the future for human patient studies. But, we still need to do a more careful study on the toxicity, and how the quantum dots would get metabolized and secreted," he says.
Nie and his group plan to continue their research by creating multicolored quantum dots with different intensities that will allow researchers to monitor multiple parameters and create a more specific diagnosis and treatment for various kinds of cancer. Their current findings were published in the August 1 edition of Nature Biotechnology.
By Lisa LaMotta
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