According Catherine Murphy, a chemistry professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, the shape of a metal determines how much light it absorbs. "If you want to shine near-infrared light—which is really good for tissue penetration—and burn something up," she says, "a rod shape works really well." Murphy developed the process for transforming spherical bits of gold into the nanorods that von Maltzahn used in his research.
Von Maltzahn, who has worked with his advisor Sangeeta Bhatia, a Harvard–M.I.T. HST electrical engineering and computer science professor, on this research for the past five years, is co-founder of a pair of companies that he hopes will help commercialize his technique: In July 2007, he helped form Salt Lake City–based Nanopartz, Inc., a worldwide supplier of gold nanoparticles; in September 2008, he helped create a Boston firm, Resonance Therapeutics, which will further develop his cancer-fighting techniques. Eugene Zubarev, an assistant chemistry professor at Rice University in Houston, developed the method for mass producing nanoparticles that Nanopartz relies on to make its nano products.
Von Maltzahn two years ago developed another nanotech-based approach to stopping cancer that relied on polymer-coated iron oxide nanoparticles bound by DNA tethers, which together helped create a visual image of a tumor through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as Scientific American.com reported in November 2007. To test the particles, he and his team implanted mice with a tumorlike gel saturated with nanoparticles and placed the animals into the wells of cup-shaped electrical coils, which activated the nanoparticles via magnetic pulses.
Von Maltzahn says he is currently conducting clinical trials of his near-infrared laser technology (to ablate cancerous tumors), but it is still years away from becoming a routine treatment. The scout–assassin model is even farther from becoming a cancer-fighting staple, says Maltzahn, noting that it could take him and his colleagues another two decades to make it safe and effective enough to use in humans.
Von Maltzahn plans to keep close tabs on his companies while he continues to pursue an academic career as a professor of biomedical or chemical engineering. Neither the business nor the academic aspects of research can be overlooked if medicine is to make its way from the lab to the patient, he says. "One of the things that appeals to me," von Maltzahn says, "is developing therapeutics such as these in a way that they can be commercialized."
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5 Comments
Add CommentI just knew getting Geoffrey those lego building blocks when he was three would pay off one day!!! Great going son!!! You are an honor to the human race. We need about 100,000 more wonderful people like you. Keep in touch and let us know all the other wonderful things you will be doing. Boy, we are really proud of you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrillions of nanoparticles!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA golden opportunity.
A fiery sword of light!
Homing smidgeons!
Hi-Tech maggots! (Devouring your dead meat, sparing your living flesh)
Can't wait to see the headlines when this achieves therapy status!
Wonderful article/discovery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do believe the expression is "hone in".
"It's essential to be able to inject it intravenously anywhere in the body and have it & home in on the tumor."
Maybe a typo by the writer?
No, The correct usage is home in, as in homing pigeon, not as in hone a knife to a sharp edge. Wonderful article, inspirational and hopeful. And to think this guy did it all without government bailout money. The entrepreneur lives!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt looks wonderful Geoffrey.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you think it will be effective against tumours in the head?
I have a benigne meningeoma, which you probably know is a tumour on the meninge, or lining inside the skull, so it is not in the brain.
I understand though, that there is something called a blood/brain barrier, which stops a lot of things getting through.
Do the nanno bits get through that barrier?
Best wishes.
Hamilton in Australia