Could the next “silver bullet” actually be gold?

I encounter many different types of colloid and nanoparticle applications in my routine interactions with customers and we are often asked to analyze such samples for our customers and prospective customers.  The range of potential applications for these nanomaterials is truly astounding.

Time and again it has been shown that analyzing metal nanoparticles such as colloidal silver and colloidal gold, using dynamic light scattering and electrophoretic light scattering techniques, helps researchers get a handle on important control parameters such as size, coating/functionalization and stability behavior.

It was with great interest, then, I recently read an article describing  how researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotoxicology Characterization Lab (NCL) published a paper revealing their latest research  in the development of dendron-stabilized gold nanoparticles.  These new core-shell particles could potentially be engineered to be biocompatible, uniform, highly controllable, stable, “targetable” to individual cancer cells or tumor sites and also be made to order.

Indeed, the silver bullet of the future might just be functionalized gold nanoparticles.