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Large-scale screening of nanomaterial toxicity and activity (Nanowerk, 6/13/08) |
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June 13, 2008 |
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As researchers develop an ever-expanding toolkit of
nanoparticles for use as drug and imaging agent delivery vehicles, there is a
growing need to understand how a given nanoparticle’s physical and chemical
properties affect biological activity and toxicity. Now, two researchers
working independently of one another have developed new methods for measuring
the biological activity of nanomaterials in a highly systematic manner that
enable them to draw important insights about nanomaterial biologic activity.
Reporting its work in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a research group lead by
Ralph Weissleder, M.D., Ph.D., co-principal investigator of the MIT-Harvard
Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, and Stuart Schreiber, Ph.D., of the
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, describes its development of a broad panel
of in vitro assays that measure a variety of nanoparticle properties
("Perturbational profiling of nanomaterial biologic activity"). They
then use a technique known as hierarchical clustering that identifies
nanomaterials that have similar biological effects across a wide range of
assays. This approach enabled the investigators to create strong
structure-activity relationships that correlate nanoparticle properties to
biological activities.
Read the full article here.
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Last Updated ( June 18, 2008 )
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