Golden rods

For medical applications: Production of gold nanorods without the use of cytotoxic additives

This release is available in German.

M. Bockstaller and his team have synthesized gold nanorods using an ionic liquid as a solvent. Gold nanorods are interesting starting materials in cancer therapy. Click here for more information.

Gold nanoparticles are under consideration for a number of biomedical applications, such as tumor treatment. A German-American research team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Hunter College in New York, and the RWTH Aachen has now developed a new method for the production of nanoscopic gold rods. In contrast to previous methods, they have achieved this without the use of cytotoxic additives. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the synthesis is not carried out in water, but in an ionic liquid, a "liquid salt".

Cancer cells are relatively temperature-sensitive. This is exploited in treatments involving overheating of parts of the cancer patient's body. One highly promising method is photoinduced hyperthermia, in which light energy is converted to heat. Gold nanoparticles absorb light very strongly in the near infrared, a spectral region that is barely absorbed by tissue. The absorbed light energy causes the gold particles to vibrate and is dissipated into the surrounding area as heat. The tiny gold particles can be functionalized so that the specifically bind to tumor cells. Thus, only cells that contain gold particles are killed off.