A nanoparticle test has been developed that distinguishes prostate cancer from normal and benign conditions and has the potential to predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer quantitatively.

A serum gold particle nanoparticle (AuNP) adsorption assay may answer the biggest challenge for cancer biomarker discovery and early cancer detection when the amount of specific molecules that are released from the tumor to the blood is very small.

Scientists at the University of Central Florida (Orlando, USA) who conducted the assay mixed a serum solution with a citrate-protected AuNP solution and the average particle size of the AuNP solution before and after sample incubation is measured by dynamic light scattering (DLS). The gold nanoparticles detect a specific chemical reaction between a prostate tumor and the human immunoglobulin G (IgG), an abundant protein circulating in the blood.

The IgG likes to stick to the surface of the gold nanoparticles to form a protein corona. This corona can be detected by the DLS technique. The investigators found that when cancer cells are present, they can destroy the IgG in the blood, and this specific interaction is picked up by the gold nanoparticles. This simple test can determine quantitatively how aggressive the prostate tumors are and the likelihood they will metastasize. The team tested out the technique on human tissue samples.

The average diameter of the citrate AuNP is 100 nm and the concentration of the nanoparticle is 10 pM and was obtained from Ted Pella Inc. (Redding, CA, USA). Particle size analysis of the assay solutions was conducted using an automatic DLS instrument, NDS1200, from Nano Discovery Inc. (Orlando, FL, USA). Qun Huo PhD, the lead investigator on the project, said, "Our nanoparticles not only seek out a chemical reaction that is specific to prostate cancer, they can also tell us how aggressive the cancerous cells are likely to be, which can give doctors better information to treat their patients." The study was published on March 9, 2012, in the Journal of Translational Medicine.

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University of Central Florida

Ted Pella Inc.

Nano Discovery Inc