One of the most effective treatments for cancer at the moment is chemotherapy. And with all its advantages, it has a significant drawback: extremely high toxicity to the body. But soon, as reported by the journal Angewandte Chemie, a range of low toxicity anticancer chemotherapy drugs could be developed. According to scientists, these drugs can be created using gold.
The discovery belongs to specialists from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). The new method is to use gold dust and silver nanoparticles to "prepare" the drug. The use of metal particles in medicines for treatment is not new in itself. In recent years, more than one study has been conducted on this topic. In some cases, the nanoparticles serve as a means of removing the tumor, acting as a "landmark" for the drug, which is "attracted" to the site of the tumor lesion. In other cases, nanoparticles act as a drug delivery vehicle.
But Scottish scientists have found that these particles can also be used to enhance the effect of the substance. Experts drew attention to the fact that gold accelerates many reactions in the body. This observation led them to speculate that a similar property of nanoparticles could be used to create a new type of chemotherapy that would only work in the presence of gold atoms or nanoparticles. Thus, gold nanoparticles can be separately introduced into the human body, delivered to the tumor, and then the constituent parts of the drug, which will be "collected" only directly in the lesion focus. This approach will eliminate the toxic effects of chemotherapy on the body as a whole. As one of the study's authors, Asir Unchiti-Brochet, stated,
“We discovered new chemical properties in gold that we didn’t know about before, and our experiments showed that this metal can be used to very safely“turn on”chemotherapy right inside the tumor. In the future, devices that inject gold particles only into the tumor may significantly reduce the severity of side effects for the rest of the body.”
Based on the materials of the RIA Novosti agency
Vladimir Kuznetsov
