Gold nanoparticles may zap cancer cells

ATLANTA, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Sending gold nanoparticles into cancer cells can kill them, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta suggest.

Mostafa El-Sayed, director of the Laser Dynamics Laboratory at Georgia Tech, says directing gold nanoparticles into the nuclei of cancer cells actually stops them from multiplying. Once the cell stops dividing, apoptosis -- cell death -- sets in, El-Sayed says.

"In cancer, the nucleus divides much faster than that of a normal cell, so if we can stop it from dividing, we can stop the cancer," El-Sayed says in a statement.

El-Sayed and colleagues used a peptide to bring the gold nanoparticles into the cytoplasm of a cancer cell, but not the healthy cells. A nuclear localization signal peptide was used to bring it into the nucleus. Just bringing the gold into the cytoplasm did nothing.

The study, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, found implanting the gold into the nucleus effectively kills the cancer cell.

The gold works by interfering with the cells' DNA, El-Sayed says. How that works exactly is the subject of a follow-up study.