Nanotechnology in Cancer Treatment
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Nanotechnology can be used to deliver drugs to cancer cells
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One of the major obstacle in cancer treatment is to deliver the right dose of drug to the right cells. Existing treatments involving chemotherapy have many side-effects, since the drugs affect both healthy and cancer cells.
Recently, nanoparticles have been used to deliver drugs to cancer. RNA-based targeting moieties can be attached to the particles. These moieties can help guiding the particles to the tumors, which then bind to tumor cells The particles then enter the cells through endocytosis or phagocytosis and unload the anticancer drug into the cells. Studies showed that this method is very effective against cancer and shows a lower level of toxicity in comparison to standard chemotherapy.
Nanotechnology can be used for early detection of cancer
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To detect cancer, nanoentities such as nanocrystals, quantum dots and nanoparticles, are conjugated with biomolecules designed to target specific cancer cells. These nanosensors can be used to detect cancers at early stages. They can also be used to detect deaths of cancer cells and measure the effectiveness of cancer treatment.
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Nanotechnology can be used to visualize tumors
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Another major application of nanotecholongy in cancer treatment is imaging. For instance, nanoentities that have imaging capability such as quantum dots can be delivered to tumor cells. Quantum dots are particularly suitable for medical imaging since their optical properties can be changed through manipulation of their physical characteristics. Thus, quantum dots can be used to color-code and track different types of cells, with extremely high resolution.
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