Could Nanoparticles in Your Vitamins Affect Your Wellness?

Researchers from Cornell are now warning about the wellness risks posed by nanoparticles in vitamins and food that are consumed every day. The new research turns on its head everything that we thought we knew about the safety of additives, as it seems to show that an FDA-approved substance that is present in some additives and vitamins may cause an iron deficiency in the body that has not previously been known.

A nanoparticle is a very tiny molecule and is something which is used in vitamins to help the body to absorb them as well as possible. Researchers have been looking into these molecules to see if there is a way that they can be utilised to transfer cancer drugs directly to cancer tumours in the body. The molecules are also added to sunscreens in order to transfer titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, although concerns have now been raised about the safety of these.

The study, led by the department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University looked at the effects of large doses of polystyrene nanoparticles on iron absorption, using chickens as the test subjects.

Chickens were used because iron is absorbed in their guts in the same way as it is in humans, and they are also susceptible to micronutrient deficiencies, much like humans are.

The study showed that nanoparticles seemed to inhibit the absorption of iron in the gut, which can lead to all kinds of serious health conditions and cause a number of problems in the human body. This may lead to calls for regulation of nanotechnology, as nanoparticles are not currently required to be labelled when present in any food substances or vitamins.

 

Could Nanoparticles in Your Vitamins Affect Your Wellness?

Categories: iron, Nanoparticles, vitamins

Nanoparticles: The Next Big Thing in Skin Cancer Treatment?

Nanoparticles are the next big thing in skin cancer wellness. This is according to researchers at the National University of Singapore, who have found that using nanoparticles is a better way of treating deep-seated skin cancers and other cancers. The team published their work in the journal Nature Medicine.

Usually, doctors aim to improve the wellbeing of these patients by injecting their tumour with light-sensitive drugs, and then bathing the tumour with a beam of light. This is a non-invasive technique, known as photodynamic therapy, which works by activating the drugs with the secondary beam of light. However, as visible light cannot penetrate more than about 2cm into the tissue, tumours with much of their mass below the skin’s surface, like an iceberg, cannot be fully reached with this method.

Hence, Associate Professor Zhang Yong of the engineering school’s bioengineering department and his colleagues have developed nanoparticles that can capture a different kind of light and use it to activate drugs injected deeper down. Using near-infrared light, the bioengineers found that nanoparticles injected into the tumours of mice gave off a visible, fluorescent light, which activated the drugs around them. This is because infrared light has longer wavelengths and can penetrate deeper into body tissue than visible light. The researchers have proved that the method works in mice, inhibiting the growth of their tumours.

Professor Zhang, who first worked on such light-converting nanoparticles six years ago,   commented that the technique is best suited to specific types of cancers, such as skin cancer and some oral and nose cancers. He said, ‘We are not saying it is a replacement for chemotherapy. It is an improvement on current photodynamic therapy.’ The professor, who was trained at Zhejiang University as a materials scientist, added that scientists elsewhere are studying the use of drug-infused nanoparticles to directly target tumours, but current drug-targeting is not yet as precise as a focused beam of light.

Working with the National Cancer Centre Singapore, the researchers are now looking to test the safety and level of toxicity in these nanoparticles, which will hopefully set the stage for pilot clinical trials on humans in the next two to three years. There could potentially be other applications for the nanoparticles, which includes anything from bioimaging to faster detection and diagnosis of infectious disease.

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Nanoparticles: The Next Big Thing in Skin Cancer Treatment?

Categories: Nanoparticles, Skin Cancer, treatment