Over 20 years ago, when scientists at Rice (my alma mater) first discovered what they called Buckyballs, no one knew where it would lead.
One dream of eventual Nobel-winner Richard Smalley was that they would find uses in medicine. He was working in that area when he died, last year, of leukemia.
So it is gratifying to read that another Rice scientist has taken us pretty far down that road.
Physorg reports that chemistry professor Lon Wilson and his team have found a way to ionize very short carbon nanotubes, giving them a negative charge, and then loaded drugs or imaging agents on them. (And, no I can’t hide the snark. See, guys at Rice can do good work, too.)
By giving them a charge, the team separated the tubes, meaning they could be worked on (and tracked) individually once they entered the bloodstream. Anti-cancer drugs could be targeted directly at tumors. Images could be taken of tumors with extraordinary accuracy, and even individual cancer cells would become visible.
Oh, the charged tubes also dissolve more readily in water than uncharged nanotubes.
All of this brings Dr. Smalley’s dream of nanotubes’ practical use in
medicine much, much closer. He’s smiling down from heaven. I’m smiling,
too, down here.
