A Novel Method for Producing Functional Nanoparticles for Medical Applications

纳米技术的一个令人兴奋的方面是它跨越了物理、化学和生物学之间的障碍，具有多学科特性。最近，人们一直在探索新的癌症疗法，这些疗法通常使用有毒药物，从而在伤害患者和治疗癌症之间取得平衡。一种基于纳米技术的方法是使用直径小于10纳米的磁性纳米颗粒(比人类头发的宽度小5000倍)附着在定位并附着在癌细胞上的“靶向分子”上。一旦放置到位，一个振荡的外部磁场就会加热颗粒及其附着的细胞，从而杀死它们，而不会损害健康的组织。这种温和的治疗方法就是所谓的“神奇子弹”方法，在早期临床试验中已被证明在原则上有效，但由于可用的纳米颗粒不能产生足够的热量而受到阻碍。在莱斯特最近的一项突破中，物理和天文学的凝聚态物理小组开发了一种新的方法来生产高度磁性的生物兼容纳米颗粒悬浮液，这种悬浮颗粒产生的热量将是现有流体的5-10倍。这笔赠款将支持物理、化学和莱斯特综合医院之间的合作，开发这项技术，将纳米颗粒与靶向分子结合，并测试新的悬浮液在体外的肿瘤杀伤性能。

An exciting aspect of Nanotechnology is its multidisciplinarity that crosses barriers between physics, chemistry and biology. Recently it has been explored for new cancer therapies, which conventionally use toxic drugs resulting in a balancing act between harming the patient and treating the cancer. A nanotechnology-based approach is to use magnetic nanoparticles less than 10 nanometres across (5,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair) attached to ‘targeting molecules’ that locate and attach only to cancer cells. Once in place an oscillating external magnetic field heats the particles and their attached cells, thereby killing them, without harming healthy tissue. This gentle treatment is the so-called ‘magic bullet’ approach and has been shown to work in principle in early clinical trials but is hindered by the available nanoparticles not producing enough heat. In a recent breakthrough at Leicester, the Condensed Matter Physics group in Physics and Astronomy developed a new method of producing suspensions of highly magnetic bio-compatible nanoparticles that will generate 5-10 times as much heat per particle as existing fluids. The grant will support a collaboration between Physics, Chemistry and the Leicester General Hospital to develop the technology, conjugate the nanoparticles with targeting molecules and test the new suspensions for their tumour-killing performance in vitro.