Like little golden assassins, 'smart' nanoparticles identify, target and kill cancer cells

Rather than criticize and tax to death the American health care and other industries, and spend billions of dollars in useless "pork" projects and bailouts, wouldn't it be better to invest in the future such as space, whose research has created the mattress I sleep on and many other product innovations, or in medical research as discussed in this life saving discovery?

Excerpt: Led by Carl Batt, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Food Science, the researchers synthesized nanoparticles - shaped something like a dumbbell - made of gold sandwiched between two pieces of iron oxide. They then attached antibodies, which target a molecule found only in colorectal cancer cells, to the particles. Once bound, the nanoparticles are engulfed by the cancer cells.

To kill the cells, the researchers use a near-infrared laser, which is a wavelength that doesn't harm normal tissue at the levels used, but the radiation is absorbed by the gold in the nanoparticles. This causes the cancer cells to heat up and die.

"This is a so-called 'smart' therapy,"

Read it here.