Glow hope for medicine
Monday May 21st, 2012
Scientists have taken a further step towards bringing tiny glowing crystals, known as quantum dots, into medicine, it has been revealed.
Developers
hope the dots can be used to develop new methods of diagnosis and treatment
- by helping highlight cancers or becoming part of light-activated therapies.
The favoured technology uses cadmium selenide and cadmium is normally poisonous.
Now laboratory research, involving rhesus monkeys, has found no health effects from an injection of quantum dots. The animals were studied for up to a year, according to a report in Nature Nanotechnology.
But the study also highlighted the risks of the treatment. Most of the cadmium stayed in the animal's bodies.
The research involved the University at Buffalo, New York, USA, with the Chinese ChangChun University of Science and Technology, China, and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Researcher Professor Paras Prasad, of the Buffalo university, said: "This is the first study that uses primates as animal models for in vivo studies with quantum dots.
"So far, such toxicity studies have focused only on mice and rats, but humans are very different from mice. More studies using animal models that are closer to humans are necessary."
Nature Nanotechnology May 20 2012
Tags: Asia | Cancer | North America
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