Silicon Particles As Trojan Horses For Potential Cancer...

Silicon Particles as Trojan Horses for Potential Cancer Therapy Published in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology, 2014. Web link: http://www.jnanobiotechnology.com/content/12/1/35 Authors: Roberto Fenollosa; Eduardo Garcia-Rico; Susana Alvarez; Rosana Alvarez, Xiang Yu; Isabel Rodriguez; Susana Carregal-Romero; Carlos Villanueva; Manuel Garcia-Algar; Pilar Rivera-Gil; Angel R de Lera; Wolfgang J Parak; Francisco Meseguer; Ramà ³n A Alvarez-Puebla. Summary Cancer is a disease that involves abnormal growth of cells with a danger of spreading over other parts of the body. Modern biological researches being made to treat different forms of cancer have all been using one common material: nanoparticles. These particles have properties useful for the treatment of cancer like their stability in solvents, the adjustable surface chemistry for delivery, and the ideal size to deliver bio organic ligands to cells1. Even combining together nanoparticles with different functionality increases their potential use in cancer treatment. The common use of the particles in treatment is to direct them to target cells with antibodies attached to their surfaces. There is a monetary limitation to this method needing large and expensive machines. Some methods require the particles to be heated with a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine or an electromagnetic field which causes death of cells around the target cells. Porous silicon particles (PSiPs), because of their biodegradability and their