In 2009, Dr. Qun Huo and her team made a discovery that could potentially bring cancer detection to the drug store.
Now, thanks to a $100,000 Florida Technology Transfer and Commercialization Partnership Grant, the discovery that might turn into an over-the-counter cancer test could be available in three to five years.
It’s like a pregnancy test, Huo said, who is an associate professor at U. Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center.
The professor also received a one-year Biomedical Research Grant worth $175,000 from the Florida Department of Health in July of last year. Other grants come from the National Science Foundation, Gold Research Opportunities Worldwide Program and other private funds.
Huo, who has been studying gold nanoparticles for a little more than two years, also compared the test to a diabetic checking his or her blood sugar levels.
When a patient is tested for cancer at the hospital, the doctor has to draw a vial of blood, but when this new technology comes out, the amount needed will be much less, Huo said.
The take-home test will serve as a red flag before the symptoms appear to let someone know they need to get checked out by a doctor. The test won’t be able to tell you what kind of cancer has been detected, which is why more testing at the hospital is required.
According to the World Gold Council, gold in the treatment of cancer started in 1955 and new treatment technologies still under development rely on the ability of tiny gold nanoparticles to specifically collect in a cancerous tumor by passing through leaky blood vessels attached to a tumor.
Gold nanoparticles have special optical properties that are used as an optical probe to help trace what’s going on in the biological system, as the molecules in the body are so small that they are not visible to the naked eye.
The system works by designing nanoparticles to affix themselves to cancer-producing proteins. The particles are then mixed into a solution that the blood sample is dropped into. If the cancer-producing protein is present, the nanoparticles will surround the protein.
Huo uses dynamic light scattering, a physics technique that can determine molecule size, according to the Brookhaven National Laboratory website.
“This is like attaching a molecule with a light bulb,” Huo said. “I can see the light bulb but not the molecule.”
Lauren Austin, who graduated from UCF last year with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, worked for Huo for three years.
“[Huo taught me] how to conjugate biomolecules to gold nanoparticles and how to operate and analyze multiple instruments and data,” said Austin, who is now working on a doctorate in biochemistry at Georgia Tech.
Austin is continuing to study gold nanoparticles at Georgia Tech because of all that she learned from Huo during her time at UCF.
“My research is a very valuable tool in other areas of biomedical research,” Huo said. “It detects biomarkers (special molecules related to cancer and types of cancer) related to other cancers.”
Huo hopes to commercialize the gold nanoparticle technology in a year or two and have it on the market in the next five years.