- Researchers from the UK have developed a technique that could make light-based cancer treatment more effective and safer for patients while reducing its cost.
- Light-based or photo-dynamic therapy is a clinically-approved treatment which uses drugs that only work when exposed to light to destroy cancer cells.
- However,many of these drugs are frequently toxic even without light, causing many side effects in patients and leading to treatment failure.
- The researchers have sought to improve these drugs by using small carbon dots as a way to get the drug to the tumour.
- Carbon dots are fluorescent nanoparticles with very little toxicity making them extremely useful for this application.These nanoparticles were made using common ingredients such as sucrose and citric acid which occurs naturally in various fruits.
