Gold nanoparticles improve cancer chemotherapy effectiveness and reduce side effects

　　Xinhua News Agency: A new study recently released by Imperial College London shows that tiny gold nanoparticles can improve the effectiveness of cancer chemotherapy and reduce the side effects of chemotherapy on patients.

　　Gold nanoparticles are nanoscale particles of gold and can be used in medical imaging technology, tumor detection, etc.

　　Researchers from the National Heart and Lung Institute, a subsidiary of Imperial College London, have discovered that gold nanoparticles are easily absorbed by human cancer cells. After they coat the particles with a layer of chemotherapy drugs, they can use them as "transporters" to accurately deliver chemotherapy drugs to the cancer cells.

　　Andrew Thorley, a researcher at the National Heart and Lung Institute who participated in the study, said that when chemotherapy drugs are directly injected into the human body, while killing cancer cells, they may also kill normal cells and immune cells together, causing side effects. The use of gold nanoparticles is expected to achieve precise delivery of chemotherapy drugs so that they only act on cancer cells and do not harm other cells.

　　Solly said gold was chosen because it does not react with human cells and the gold nanoparticles can be easily observed using conventional computed tomography scans, helping doctors confirm whether they have been delivered to cancer cells. In addition, gold nanoparticles that have entered cancer cells can also be heated with infrared rays outside the body, and the heat can be used to kill cancer cells from the inside, achieving a double blow against cancer cells.

　　Solly said that this technology has very good prospects and is expected to be used in the treatment of various cancers in the future, but it still needs to be verified through large-scale clinical trials to verify the effect of gold nanoparticles.