Physicists could Kill Cancer With Gold’s Nanobubbles

Scientists at Rice University by using lasers and nanoparticles, have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions.

The scientists used lasers to make “nanobubbles” by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, scientists found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.

Rice physicist Dmitri Lapotko, the lead researcher on the project said “Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell,”. He further said “The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill.”

“Nanobubbles” are created when gold “nanoparticles” are struck by short laser pulses. The short-lived bubbles are very bright and can be made smaller or larger by varying the power of the laser. Because these particals are visible under a microscope, nanobubbles can be used to diagnose sick cells or to track the explosions that are destroying them.

Last year, Lapotko and its colleagues at the Laboratory for Laser Cytotechnologies at the A.V. Lykov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute in Minsk, Belarus, applied nanobubbles to arterial plaque. They found that they could blast right through the deposits that block arteries.Lapotko said “The bubbles work like a jackhammer,” .

In the current study, Lapotko and Rice colleague Jason Hafner, associate professor of physics and astronomy and of chemistry, tested the approach on leukemia cells and cells from head and neck cancers.In the test they attached antibodies to the nanoparticles so they would target only the cancer cells, and they found the technique was effective at locating and killing the cancer cells.

Lapotko said “the nanobubble technology could be used for “theranostics,” a single process that combines diagnosis and therapy”. Lapotko said “the technique can be use for post-therapeutic assessment, or what physicians often refer to as guidance” , because the cell-bursting nanobubbles also show up on microscopes in real time,

Hafner said, “The mechanical and optical properties of the bubbles offer unique advantages in localizing the biomedical applications to the individual cell level, or perhaps even to work within cells.”

The research resulted from collaboration between Rice and the Lykov Institute of the Academy of Science of Belarus, which recently have established the US-Belarus Research Lab of Fundamental and Biomedical Nanophotonics.