Nano kills more cancer, looks like we're getting close..

[outlander]

Rice physicists kill cancer with 'nanobubbles'

Rice physicists kill cancer with 'nanobubbles'
Team finds method of IDing, destroying individual diseased cells



VIDEO: Rapidly expanding nanobubbles blasted through arterial plaque in a 2009 study. Gold nanoparticles were sprayed on the plaque (from left) and illuminated with a laser from above. With the backlighting...
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Using lasers and nanoparticles, scientists at Rice University have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make "nanobubbles" by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.

"Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell," said Rice physicist Dmitri Lapotko, the lead researcher on the project. "The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill."

If this tech continues getting cancer may soon be no more of a big deal than having a common cold..

[7redorbs]

wow Sean , nice find.. here is some more details for anyone interested ;)

What it is:

Nanobubbles are gas-containing cavities in liquid solution (such cavities are often called bubbles).e They are under excess pressure as the surface tension causes a tendency to minimize their surface area, and hence volume.a Nanobubbles grow or shrink by diffusion according to whether the surrounding solution is over-saturated or under-saturated with the dissolved gas relative to the raised cavity pressure. As the solubility of gas is proportional to the gas pressure and this pressure is exerted by the surface tension in inverse proportion to the diameter of the bubbles, there is increasing tendency for gasses to dissolve as the bubbles reduce in size, increases greatly at small bubble diametersa and so accelerating the process. Such dissolution is increased by the bubble's movement and contraction during this process, which aids the removal of any gas-saturated solution around the cavities. Calculations show that nanobubbles should only persist for a few microseconds [1268]. However, the ease with which water forms larger visible bubbles, under slight tensile pressure well below the tensile strength of water, and the greater difficulty that occurs in this on degassing, both indicate the occurrence of gas-containing nanobubbles (cavities). Indeed, a high density of nanobubbles has recently been created in solution and the heterogeneous mixture lasts for more than two weeks [1618]. The total amount of gases in these nanobubble solutions reached 600 cm3 (in 1.9 x 1016 50-nm radius nanobubbles) per 1 dm3 of water, and the liquid density was about 0.988 g.cm-3 [1618]. Larger micron-plus sized bubbles can also last a long time but have sufficient buoyancy to rise through the solution and release contained gas at the surface before the gas dissolves.

How:

In the analysis that follows it is shown that surface charge can counter the surface tension, so preventing high pressures within the nanobubbles. Clearly the final net charge density at the surface is that required for stability. It may be expected that as the charge density increases, as the nanobubble shrinks, then some charge density will be expelled to the bulk but it is not clear to what extent this will occur; the energy required for expulsionb must be less than the increase in energy due to the approach of the charges. In any case, surface charge density will always slow down the process of nanobubble collapse. Even at the equilibrium charge density, contained gas will dissolve if the solution interface is under-saturated, although this is unlikely if the exposed liquid water surface is also in contact with similar gas at similar pressure.

The effect of charges at the water/gas interface is shown below with the surface negative charges repelling each other and so stretching out the surface. The effect of the charges is to reduce the effect of the surface tension. As the repulsive force between like charges increases inversely as the square of their distances apart the charges cause strongly increasing outwards pressure as bubble diameter lessens. As well as tending to increase the nanobubble diameters, surface charge will clearly also tend to increase the contact angles. The greater van der Waals attraction across the gas bubble also assists in flattening surface nanobubbles [1274].

The surface tension tends to reduce the surface whereas the surface charge tends to expand it. Equilibrium will be reached when these opposing forces are equal.

Nanobubbles, London South Bank University