According to new research, nanocapsules “hot” can provide radiation therapy to individual organs. A team, including Ben Davis and Malcolm Green of the chemistry department at the University of Oxford, reported in Nature Materials how they created a ‘cage’ of a carbon nanotube single-wall and then filled the tube with metal halide salts melted radioactive.
Once the cage, and its cargo of salt, were cooled by the pipe ends are sealed to create a small radioactive nanocapsules with a ‘sugar’ outer surface that helps to improve their compatibility within the body.
By this method, the team was able to create nanocapsules that could offer a highly concentrated dose of radiation (800% ionizing dose per gram) of type to radiotherapy. They then used these mice to test how radioactive nanocapsules would be taken by the body.
They found that the nanocapsules were accumulated in the lung tissue, but not in the thyroid, stomach and bladder as with radioactive dose of salts introduced free without being encapsulated. Even after a week in the body the nanocapsules were stable without any significant leakage of radiation beyond the lung.
While much more work needed to create a treatment for humans, is the first time researchers have shown that this system of nanocapsules for radiotherapy could be made to work within the body.
