Basic facts Cancer

Cancer The Basic Facts Polarity Negative Quality Cardinal Element Water Symbol The Crab Ruling Planet The Moon Opposite Sign Capricorn... 

CNTs have been studied for cancer therapies despite the fact that these have been shown to accumulate to toxic levels within the organs of diverse animal models and different cell lines (Fiorito et al., 2006 Tong and Cheng, 2007). The molecular and cellular mechanisms for toxicity of carbon nanotubes have not been fully clarified. Furthermore, toxicity must be examined on the basis of multiple routes of administration (i.e., pulmonary, transdermal, ocular, oral, and intravenous) and on multiple species mammals, lower terrestrial animals, aquatic animals (both vertebrates and invertebrates), and plants (both terrestrial and aquatic). A basic set of tests for risk assessment of nanomaterials has been put forward (Nano risk framework). 

A few years ago, surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) has been implemented in biomarker discovery (30,31). Ladds et al. employed SPRi for detection of candidate diagnostic biomarkers in cancer in combination with antibody arrays (32). Basically, SPRi is a SPR device coupled with a CCD camera, which obtains a slide image when a polarized light is reflected depending on the interaction on the surface. In fact, it is based on surface plas-mons as SPR however, SPRi can analyze hundreds of samples on a single experiment. 

Use of this proposed approach represents a significant paradigm shift in noncancer risk assessment and is inconsistent with basic biological principles. Earlier in this chapter we discussed the fact that it is unlikely for many carcinogens to operate with a linear dose-response. Although it is possible for a single molecule to interact with DNA to increase cancer risk, carcinogenesis is not a multistep process, and protective controls are in place to limit tumor formation. 

---