Diamonds found useful in detecting cancer

The finding was published on Sunday in the magazine Nature Communications revealing how a synthetic version of a diamond can light up early-stage cancers in non-toxic, non-invasive Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. Unless a biopsy is performed, there are few options to see whether the treatment has been successful in targeting the cancer cells within the body, writes Oracle Recorder. The study focused on nano-diamonds which are 4-5 nanometer diamonds found inside meteorites.

The team, lead by Professor Reilly, looked to a process known as hyperpolarizing nano-diamonds.

The hyperpolarized nano-diamonds were attached to specific cancer-fighting molecules, so that they could be tracked throughout the body.

The lead author of the research paper, Ewa Rej said, “We’ve magnetized the atoms within the nano-diamond and this makes them light up on an MRI scan”. In a statement issued regarding this matter, she said that pancreatic and brain cancers are two of the most deadly forms of the disease, so development of a procedure that shows promise to detect these diseases at an early stage is undoubtedly exciting news. A joint research by Brown University and University of Rhode Island discovered that gold has the ability of increasing the effectiveness radiation treatments among cancer patients. Yet, the team explained that the new technology is not expensive because they would use synthetic diamonds which are very cheap to produce.

Furthermore, Prof Reilly notes, “We thought we could build on these non-toxic properties realizing that diamonds have magnetic characteristics enabling them to act as beacons in MRIs”. Since these diamonds are non-toxic, they can be used in biomedical and mechanical applications.

Researchers have plans of using this discovery for detecting tumors that are usually not diagnosed at an early stage i.e. before they become life threatening.

“We know nano diamonds were of interest of delivering drugs during chemotherapy because they are largely non-toxic and non-reactive”, said Reilly. We effectively turned a pharmaceutical problem into a physics problem. Those atoms are combined with special substances that interact with cancer cells when they meet.

“This is a great example of how quantum physics research tackles real-world problems”, says Reilly.