Interesting nanotech research to fight cancer is coming out of the University of California, Riverside:
Two engineering professors at the University of California, Riverside are developing devices 100,000 times thinner than a human hair, that can listen to cancerous cells, deliver chemotherapy to them and leave surrounding healthy tissue intact.
Assistant professors, Mihri Ozkan of Electrical Engineering and Cengiz Ozkan of Mechanical Engineering at UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering, are leading research into micro-electrical arrays, or the signals cells emit, and the nanodevices (devices made at the molecular level) to deliver anti-cancer drugs.
The married couple hopes to combine the technologies to “listen” for the subtle electrical cues that cancerous cells emit and deliver chemotherapies with such precision that only the cancerous cells are affected…
Cengiz Ozkan says focusing on the electrical signals cells emit is far more benign process and one that holds a great deal of promise, when coupled with nanofabrication (building things at the molecular scale) techniques.
“You effectively listen to the cells. The ones with cancer emit a different signal than healthy ones,” he said. Using DNA and nanotube technologies, Cengiz Ozkan is also developing a drug delivery system that targets the cancerous cells.
The press release…