HealthWatch: Stanford Scientists Find New Way To Look Inside Body
STANFORD (CBS 5) – Scientists at Stanford University have developed a new way to look inside a living, breathing body without the radiation.
In a lab tucked into the basement of a science building, Stanford researcher Sarah Sherlock has shed new light on an old problem.
When she first saw what she and her team accomplished, she couldn't wait to show others: "I was surprised. I didn't think it was going to look quite like that", said Sherlock.
The head of the lab Professor Hongjie Dai was also stunned. "I was really surprised," remarked Dai.
What did the grad student and her team do? By using a laser light, an infrared camera, and extremely tiny particles, the Stanford researchers developed a way to look deeply, and with greater clarity, into the workings of a living, breathing body. In this case, the researchers looked inside a mouse.
The mouse was first sedated, then the mouse was injected with tiny particles called carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes have an unusual quality. When one shines a light on the mouse, the nanotubes circulating inside begin to glow.
As they continue to circulate, they glow more and more brightly, providing a clear, crisp image of the animal's internal organs.
"You have the lungs and then the kidneys and then a kind of glowing signal from all over the mouse as the nanotubes go to different organs and starts flowing thru the blood," said Sherlock.
Using special software, the scientists then came up with a revealing anatomical map. "We were able to even distinguish organs that you couldn't normally distinguish like the pancreas," said Sherlock.
While CT scans and x-rays reveal more in the body, this method has at least one advantage: no radiation. In addition, the equipment is less expensive compared to CT scanners.
The Stanford team hopes glowing nanotubes will better track the effectiveness of cancer drugs in research and may one day help patients in the clinic.
"For example if we use nanotubes for drug delivery we will be able to se where the drug is going in the body," Dai said.
And while the safety of nanotubes is still a big concern, the researchers found that they were not toxic in the mice. The mice excreted them and lived without any apparent harm.
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