Cancer researchers are not shy of using nanotechnology. Their work is making promising headway into developing safer and more effective treatments. And now, new developments in the area mean that the general public can help through crowdsourcing. Cancer causes one in every four deaths in the US, and an estimated 12.7 million new cancer cases were diagnosed worldwide in 2008. Current treatments are far from ideal. For example, typical chemotherapies seep out of the blood stream after injection and spread throughout the body. The drugs are then free to attack all the cells encountered – even healthy ones – causing significant side effects. This is obviously far from ideal. Bioengineers are therefore experimenting with nanoparticles that can deliver drugs and diagnostics directly to tumours. Nanoparticles are slightly bigger than drugs: around five to 500 nanometers, which is around 100 to 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. This special size allows them to leak out of the large pores in tumour vessels, and yet still be contained in the blood stream throughout the rest of the body. As a result, nanoparticles can passively accumulate in tumours while avoiding healthy tissue. Nanoparticles come in different sizes, shapes and materials. They can be loaded with drugs that are released in a controlled
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