More than just the idea of how expensive diamonds are, physicists at the University of Sydney have successfully found another purpose of this mineral - to detect cancer tumors at the early stage before their harmful onset.
The study, which first appeared on Friday in the journal Nature Communications, discusses the potential use of diamond in nanoscale as an effective sensor that lights up in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan. It took a while for the researchers to come up with the best chemical modification in order to light up these diamonds inside the MRI machine, ABC News reports.
The principal author of the research paper was Ewa Rej who stated that they used the power of magnetism to align the atoms within the diamond nanoparticles so these could create signals that are detectable by the MRI instrument. After molecular modification, the diamond nanoparticles were then attached to other chemicals that are known to be highly specific in targeting cancer tumors.
Professor David Reilly of the School of Physics led the research team. He accentuated the properties of diamonds as being largely non-toxic and non-reactive, making them of high interest for drug delivery in medical treatments such as chemotherapy. Although diamonds are highly expensive, the technology just needs minute amounts which would not trouble the expense.
These relatively cheap nanoparticles are injected into the human body system while they are simultaneously monitored as they find their way towards certain receptors, if there is, to which they will attached. If a patient is at risk of developing any form of cancer tumor, the area where light is detected by the MRI machine will give us a hint about the most likely type of cancer that the patient would suffer in the near future.
"This is a great example of how quantum physics research tackles real-world problems, in this case opening the way for us to image and target cancers long before they become life-threatening," Professor Reilly was quoted saying in ScienceDaily.
As to future developments, the research team plans to investigate the potential use of their latest design to target hard-to-detect cancer types such as pancreatic and brain cancers. As it would take quite a long time before it can be administered in humans, the researchers shall start out using mouse models to conduct sensitivity tests for their latest technology.