London, February 06: Scientists have come up with a new method that isolates and destroys sick cells using lasers and nanoparticles at Rice University.
The scientists administered lasers to create “nanobubbles” by zapping gold nanoparticles within the cells.
“Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell,” said Rice physicist and lead researcher on the project Dmitri Lapotko.
The bright short-lived bubbles can be made bigger or smaller by changing the lasers’ power.
While experimenting with cancer cells, the scientists discovered they can tune the lasers to create tiny bright bubbles that are visible and harmless or large bubbles that cause the cells to burst.
Visible under a microscope, nanobubbles can diagnose the sick cells, or track the explosions that are destroying them, ScienceDaily reported.
“The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill,” said Laptoko.
—-Agencies