the Foresight Institute

A nanotech-based gene-therapy method that dramatically improved the efficiency of conventional cancer therapy in animal models is now undergoing clinical trials.

Using a magnetic bead to slowly pull a DNA molecule through a solid-sate nanopore looks promising as the basis for a very fast and efficient nanotech DNA sequencing method.

By joining an iron oxide nanoparticle bearing a tumor-specific antibody with a gold nanoparticle bearing an anti-cancer drug, scientists created a dumbbell-like nanotech vehicle that delivered the drug into breast cancer cells.

Nanotech advances are leading toward bone implants that are are smart, multifunctional devices that will be capable of improved integration with surrounding bone tissue, and that will resist inflammation, bacterial growth, and the recurrence of bone cancer.

Another promising nanotech approach to harnessing the potential of siRNA molecules is to pack them on the surface of gold nanoparticles.

Plant viruses are a new addition to the long list of types of nanoparticles being investigated as next generation nanotech cancer therapies.

Nanotech may soon provide a solution for one of the more vexing problems in tissue engineering—how to control the differentiation of pluripotent or multipotent precursor cells into the specific cells needed to fix a specific problem.

In new variation of ways to use nanotech to treat cancer, scientists have shown that using a scorpion toxin to target nanoparticles to brain cancer cells depletes the amount on the cancer cell surface of a protein required to make the cells invasive. From the National Cancer Institute’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer “Toxin-nanoparticle combo [...]

An international team of investigators has demonstrated in mice a nanotech method of orally delivering an anticancer therapy that would normally have to be delivered by injection.

Having demonstrated a year ago an effective nanotech method for shutting down specific gene expression in a mouse model of colitis, a team of researchers at Tel Aviv University is preparing to test this method in clinical trials for blood, pancreatic, breast and brain cancers.

Nanotech could make possible the controlled release within the patient of up to four different drugs by irradiation with different wavelengths of near-infrared radiation.

Research on the interactions between carbon nanotubes and neurons shows that electrical phenomena in nanotubes may lead to engineering interactions between nanomaterials and neurons.

Nanowerk News reports that an international nanotech collaboration of American and Korean scientists, funded by the Korean government, has developed multifunctional gold-coated nanowires that are designed to swim through the blood stream and attach to cancerous cells via antibodies against the cancer cells. Exposure to an electromagnetic field should heat the nanowires and destroy the [...]

Using a promising nanotech approach to deliver the RNA molecules, a type of nanoparticle described as a neutral liposome was administered to mice bearing melanoma tumors and found to cause a significant decrease in tumor growth and in the number of metastatic tumor colonies.