Email Print Share
August 31, 2009

Neon Cancer Detector


Professor Michael Sailor hopes to dramatically change how cancer is being treated. With support from the National Science Foundation, he is on a quest to create nanoparticles that travel the bloodstream, latch onto cancers in their earliest stages and destroy them. Sailor's project is fighting the war on cancer at the nano-level. The armed forces he is amassing are a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Sailor, a professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, has spent years in search of the right stuff – a material safe enough to enter and travel the bloodstream to conquer cancers.

Credit: National Science Foundation


Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.

Videos credited to the National Science Foundation, an agency of the U.S. Government, may be distributed freely. However, some materials within the videos may be copyrighted. If you would like to use portions of NSF-produced programs in another product, please contact the Video Team in the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation.

Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.