Is there a cure for Cancer? The researchers from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee likely to have a solution. Recently, they have developed fluorescent carbon nanodots that can simultaneously detect and destroy cancer cells.
For cancer, the nanosized (10-9 meter) carbon materials can serve as therapeutic and diagnostic agents and have been extracted from the leaves of the rosy periwinkle plant.
P Gopinath, who is leading the team, said, “Such events of real-time image-guided anticancer therapy by a single system open a new paradigm in the field of anticancer therapy. With these nanomaterials, we can identify the cancer cells and track them by an imaging system simultaneously as the cells themselves are being eradicated in a precise surgical strike.”
For further evaluation of these nanomaterials in oncological applications- both diagnostics and treatment, they are planning next stage animal studies.
The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Union Ministry of Science and Technology are supporting this research by the IIT scholars.
In the field of oncology and cancer drug research, the identification of cancer cells and their inhibition/destruction have been continuing challenges for many decades.
“In the past few years, nanotechnology has emerged as one of the most promising areas in cancer diagnostics and treatment and nanomaterials – materials having dimensions in the nanometre (10-9 m) range – are being increasingly studied as agents in molecular tumor imaging, molecular diagnosis and targeted therapy,” Gopinath added.