NanomedicineCenter.com

New DNA screening process

A new process called methylation has been developed at the Medical school in Baltimore. It actually helps discovering chemical modifications to DNA. This discovery could help in early cancer diagnosis.

What methylation actually makes possible is switching on/off the healthy genes which cause cancer, without damaging the DNA. It’s all done with improved PCR – the DNA parts are being copied millions of time within a small amount of time, sensitively and not too expensive.

“The detection of DNA methylation is very important, because it’s been demonstrated that a large number of tumor suppressor genes become deactivated by using DNA methylation.” said Mr. Bailey, one of the researchers. “Our process of methylation screening provides an easy, inexpensive and valuable tool for the early diagnosis of cancer and monitoring tumor behavior.”

Drug delivery progress

It seems that drug delivery keeps progressing every day. Researchers at University of Queensland in Australia and their leader Dr. Qiao are working hard on creating a new technology which will be able to make nanoparticles for separation of molecules.

Dr. Qiao and his team have been rewarded with around $80,000 in order to work on examining nanoparticles’ properties.

„Harnessing these properties has significant implications in drug manufacturing and drug delivery“ says Dr. Qiao. „We’re using magnetic properties of nanoparticles to improve molecule separation. We also hope to be able to improve drug delivery.“

Dr. Qiao is a well-established researcher and scientist and his work will grant Australia with a place in the nanomedicine research charts.

Nanomedicine to help cure atherosclerosis

Nanomedicine, a division of nanotechnology, is about to cure atherosclerosis in cooperation with an old-fashioned drug.

The research has been done at the Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers have discovered that drug-laced nanoparticles (fumagillin) combined with a statin could stop the growth of blood vessels that are food for arterial plaques. The research has shown that this treatment also prevents the vessels from growing again from the start, which actually stabilizes the plaque.

Gregory Lanza, MD, PhD, one of the researchers said: “We saw that statins sustain the acute inhibition of blood vessel growth produced by the fumagillin nanoparticles within the plaque.”

Patients with atherosclerosis take statins on a regular basis since they lower the level of cholesterol. But statin itself does not “cure” the disease.

The research has been published in “Antiangiogenic synergism of integrin-targeted fumagillin nanoparticles and atorvastatin in atherosclerosis” by Winter PM, Caruthers SD, Williams TA, Wickline SA, Lanza GM.