Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Team develops nanoparticles to battle cancer








Sangeeta Bhatia

Source:www.mit.edu
On a quest to modernize cancer treatment and diagnosis, an MIT professor and her colleagues have created new nanoparticles that mimic blood platelets. The team wants to use these new multifunctional particles to carry out different medical missions inside the body, from imaging to drug delivery.

After years of research, “we still treat cancer with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. “People are now starting to think more in terms of ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ that sci-fi movie where they miniaturized a surgical team and injected it into someone.”

The National Cancer Institute has recognized the value of Bhatia’s work and has awarded her a grant to continue this line of research. Bhatia and collaborators Michael J. Sailor, chemist and materials scientist at the University of California at San Diego, and Erkki Ruoslahti, tumor biologist at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, will receive $4.3 million in funding over five years.[Read the full article]

No comments: