Nanoparticles Pair Up to Fight Disease

[On the Road]

Feb. 10, 2006—The ability of a virus and a speck of gold to automatically pair up could lead to microscopic, multipurpose shuttles that target and destroy disease in the human body.

The tiny platform could deliver drugs, genes or restorative stem cells to different parts of the body, and could even be used to grow stem cells.

"In a relatively simple way, we produced a targeted nano-sensor that has multiple applications," said Renata Pasqualini, professor of medicine and cancer biology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

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http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060206/nanoshuttle_tec.html

This sounds very important, but for some reason, I'm having difficulty absorbing it. Can anyone more attuned to biological sciences enlighten me?

[xchrom]

1. not me.

but it doesn't take much to make feel like i dawdled too long on my way to school.

[Massacure]

2. Gold has three spare electrons, hence it has a negative charge.

Elements generally do not like having spare electrons, so if you create a particle that need electrons, you can have it try and grab electrons from gold which creates a bond. They reason they use gold is because it has a charge and because it does not affect the human body's immune system.