The nanoparticles can reveal tiny cancerous tumors that are invisible by ordinary means of detection, according to the researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.
The researchers demonstrated that very small human melanoma tumors growing in mice – indiscernible from the surrounding tissue by direct MRI scan – could be “lit up” and easily located as soon as 30 minutes after the mice were injected with the nanoparticles.
As nanoparticles can be engineered to carry a variety of substances, they also may be able to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to malignant tumors as effectively as they carry the imaging materials that spotlight cancerous growth.
The effectiveness of the nanoparticles in diagnosis and therapy in humans will be tested in clinical trials in about one and a half to two years.