2009-01-12
Working on a grant from the Clinical and Translation Science Center at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Cornell Nanobiotechnology Center, members of the Wiesner group participated in developing a new generation of microscopic particles for molecular imaging, constituting one of the first promising nanoparticle platforms that may be readily adapted for tumor targeting and treatment in the clinic.
According to the investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Cornell University, these particles are biologically safe, stable, and small enough to be easily transported across the body's structures and efficiently excreted through the urine. It is the first time that all of these properties have been successfully engineered on a single-particle platform, called "C dots," in order to optimize the biological behavior and imaging properties of nanoparticles for use in a wide array of biomedical and life science applications. The work will be published in the January 2009 issue of Nano Letters.
The following investigators contributed to this collaborative work: Andrew A. Burns (lead author - Wiesner group alum), Erik Herz (Wiesner Group alum) and Prof. Ulrich Wiesner of Cornell University; Jelena Vider, Oula Penate-Medina, and Steven M. Larson of MSKCC; and Hooisweng Ow and Martin Baumgart of Hybrid Silica Technologies.