The merging of two disciplines: Medicine and Nanotechnology

Gold nanoparticles show potential for noninvasive cancer treatment:

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and Georgia Institute of Technology have found a new way to kill cancer cells. Building on their previous work that used gold nanoparticles to detect cancer, they now are heating the particles and using them as agents to destroy malignant cells...

...Many cancer cells have a protein, known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), all over their surface, while healthy cells typically do not express the protein as strongly. By conjugating, or binding, the gold nanoparticles to an antibody for EGFR, suitably named anti-EGFR, the researchers were able to get the nanoparticles to specifically attach themselves to the cancer cells