Self-Assembling Nanoparticles

You’ll have to go to the published study to get the exact details of this piece, but researcher at Imperial College London report: ‘The nanoparticle is coated with a special protein, which looks for specific signals given off by tumors, and when it finds a tumor it begins to interact with the cancerous cells. This interaction strips off the protein coating, causing the nanoparticle to self-assemble into a much larger particle so that it is more visible on the scan.”  This results in a much stronger MRI signal than that of current imaging agents. MORE

Image Credit: Cancer.gov