Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1 A schematic
illustration showing how
nanoparticles or other cancer
drugs might be used to treat
cancer
Surgery
At Rice University, a flesh welder is used to fuse two pieces of chicken meat into a
single piece. The two pieces of chicken are placed together touching each other.
A greenish liquid containing gold-coated nanoshells is dribbled along the seam.
An infrared laser is traced along the seam, causing the two sides to weld together.
This could solve the difficulties and blood leaks caused when the surgeon tries to
restitch the arteries that have been cut during a kidney or heart transplant. The
flesh welder could weld the artery perfectly [
6
].
Visualization
Tracking movement can help to determine how well drugs are being distributed or
how substances are metabolized. It is difficult to track a small group of cells
throughout the body, so scientists dye the cells. These dyes need to be excited by light
of a certain wavelength in order for them to light up. While different colored dyes
absorb different frequencies of light, there is a need for as many light sources as cells.
A way around this problem is with luminescent tags. These tags are qdots attached to
proteins that penetrate cell membranes. The dots can be random in size, can be made
of bio-inert material, and they demonstrate the nanoscale property that color is size-
dependent. As a result, sizes are selected so that the frequency of light used to make a
group of qdots fluoresce is an even multiple of the frequency required to make another
group incandesce. Then both groups can be lit with a single light source.
Nanoparticle Targeting
It is increasingly observed that nanoparticles are promising tools for the
advancement of drug delivery, medical imaging, and as diagnostic sensors.
However, the biodistribution of these nanoparticles is still imperfect due to the
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