Australian physicists have found a cancer detection with diamonds method that uses synthetic, super-tiny versions of the precious gemstones long known as a so-called girl's best friend and used to make expensive rings, earrings, and necklaces, to find cancerous tumors in their early stages before they become life-threatening. The problem with using chemical mixtures through chemotherapy to find cancer cells is that few techniques besides biopsies can learn if the disease has absorbed the treatment.
The study was conducted by the University of Sydney. It was published in Nature Communications.
In 2013 the European Union's (EU) project DINAMO used diamonds' unique properties to create an innovative method to examine the molecular processes taking place in living cells.
This new tech to detect cancer with diamonds is much easier than in the past. That creates the opportunity to develop more effective treatments and could save innumerable cancer patients' lives.
Professor David Reilly is from the University of Sydney's School of Physics. His research team studied how non-toxic nanoscale diamonds could spot cancers during their early stages.
Synthetic diamonds were used as they are cheap and are highly available, according to Tech Times. Scientists developed a "hyperpolarizing" method that aligns atoms contained in the gem to make the tiny diamonds light up inside the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.
Due to the diamonds' being non-toxic and magnetic they could function as beacons in MRI devices, according to Nature World Report. The gems could track the molecules' movement inside the cancer patient's body.
This was done by attaching the hyperpolarized diamonds to cancer-targeting chemicals. Cancer cells then could attract the chemicals, causing the diamonds to light up on the MRI scanning equipment.
The research team's next study will test the cancer detection with diamonds tech on animals. It also plans to use scorpion venom and MRI scanning to target brain tumors.