In the News: Dr. Avnesh Thakor, MD, PhD, and Colleagues in the Laboratory of Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD

Gold nanoparticles as small as 100 nanometers in diameter may soon be used for early cancer detection in humans according to ground-breaking research by Dr. Thakor and his colleagues in the lab of Dr. Gambhir. Injecting gold nanoparticles into mice that attached to colorectal cancer cells, they were able to image the gold-marked cells through the light they emitted by using a Raman spectroscope. Without any toxicity to the surrounding tissues, they detected early colorectal cancer in mice. Their research is featured on the cover of Science Translational Medicine 2011;3(79).

According to Bruce Goldman in "Research Moves Nanomedicine One Step Closer to Reality" from Inside Stanford Medicine, "[t]his marks the first step up the ladder of toxicology studies that, within a year and a half, could yield to human trials of the tiny agents for detection of colorectal and possibly other cancers." Please also see "Raman Effect Makes Cancer Detection Possible" from Mangalorean.com, which describes their research.

To read the original research article published by Dr. Thakor and his colleagues, "The Fate and Toxicity of Raman-Active Silica-Gold Nanoparticles in Mice," please access Science Translational Medicine 2011;3(79) (DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001963) (co-authors: Richard Luong, Ramasamy Paulmurugan, Frank I. Lin, Paul Kempen, Cristina Zavaleta, Pauline Chu, Tarik F. Massoud, Robert Sinclair, Sanjiv S. Gambhir).

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