Gold nanorods shed light on new approach to fight...( WEST LAFAYETTE Ind. - Researchers h...)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have shown how tiny "nanorods" of gold can be triggered by a laser beam to blast holes in the membranes of tumor cells, setting in motion a complex biochemical mechanism that leads to a tumor cell's self-destruction.

Tumor cell membranes often have an abnormally high number of receptor sites to capture molecules of folic acid, or folate, a form of vitamin B that many tumor cells crave. The Purdue researchers attached folate to the gold nanorods, enabling them to target the receptors and attach to the tumor cell membranes.

"The cells are then illuminated with light in the near-infrared range," said Ji-Xin Cheng (pronounced Gee-Shin), an assistant professor in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "This light can easily pass through tissue but is absorbed by the nanorods and converted rapidly into heat, leading to miniature explosions on the cell surface."

Scientists have recently determined that gold nanorods and other nanostructures can be used to target and destroy tumor cells, but it was generally assumed that cell death was due to the high heat produced by the light-absorbing nanoparticles. The Purdue team discovered, however, that a more complex biochemical scenario is responsible for killing the cells.

"We have found that rather than cooking the cells to death, the nanorods first punch holes in the membrane, and cell death is then chemically induced, in this case by an influx of calcium," said Alexander Wei, an associate professor of chemistry at Purdue.

Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing Oct. 19 in the journal Advanced Materials. The paper, which appeared online last week, was written by doctoral students Ling Tong, Yan Zhao, Terry B. Huff and Matthew N. Hansen, along with Wei and Cheng.

The gold rods are less than 15 nanometers wide and 50 nanometers long, or roughly 200 times smaller than a red blood cell. Their small size is crit
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