<p>A team of US engineers has developed a new technology that uses an electrical field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from the blood.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The electronic chip can also serve as a tool to separate and recover nanoparticles from other complex fluids for medical, environmental and industrial applications.<br /><br />Nanoparticles, which are generally one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, are difficult to separate from plasma - the liquid component of blood - owing to their small size and low density.<br /><br />Traditional methods to remove nanoparticles from plasma samples typically involve diluting plasma.<br /><br />These methods either alter the normal behaviour of the nanoparticles or cannot be applied to some of the most common nanoparticle types.<br /><br />"This is the first example of isolating a wide range of nanoparticles out of plasma with a minimum amount of manipulation," said Stuart Ibsen, post-doctoral fellow at University of California-San Diego.<br /><br />"We have designed a very versatile technique that can be used to recover nanoparticles in a lot of different processes," he added.<br /><br />The new nanoparticle separation technology will enable researchers better monitor what happens to nanoparticles circulating in a patient's bloodstream.<br /><br />Scientists can also use this technology in the clinic to determine if the blood chemistry of a particular patient is compatible with the surfaces of certain drug-delivery nanoparticles.<br /><br />The chip contains hundreds of tiny electrodes that generate a rapidly oscillating electric field that selectively pulls the nanoparticles out of a plasma sample.<br /><br />"It's amazing that this method works without any modifications to the plasma samples or to the nanoparticles," Ibsen noted in the study published in the journal Small.<br /></p>
<p>A team of US engineers has developed a new technology that uses an electrical field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from the blood.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The electronic chip can also serve as a tool to separate and recover nanoparticles from other complex fluids for medical, environmental and industrial applications.<br /><br />Nanoparticles, which are generally one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, are difficult to separate from plasma - the liquid component of blood - owing to their small size and low density.<br /><br />Traditional methods to remove nanoparticles from plasma samples typically involve diluting plasma.<br /><br />These methods either alter the normal behaviour of the nanoparticles or cannot be applied to some of the most common nanoparticle types.<br /><br />"This is the first example of isolating a wide range of nanoparticles out of plasma with a minimum amount of manipulation," said Stuart Ibsen, post-doctoral fellow at University of California-San Diego.<br /><br />"We have designed a very versatile technique that can be used to recover nanoparticles in a lot of different processes," he added.<br /><br />The new nanoparticle separation technology will enable researchers better monitor what happens to nanoparticles circulating in a patient's bloodstream.<br /><br />Scientists can also use this technology in the clinic to determine if the blood chemistry of a particular patient is compatible with the surfaces of certain drug-delivery nanoparticles.<br /><br />The chip contains hundreds of tiny electrodes that generate a rapidly oscillating electric field that selectively pulls the nanoparticles out of a plasma sample.<br /><br />"It's amazing that this method works without any modifications to the plasma samples or to the nanoparticles," Ibsen noted in the study published in the journal Small.<br /></p>