NMR Determines Nanoparticles’ “Handedness”

[TECH NEWS]

Carnegie Mellon University’s Roberto R. Gil and Rongchao Jin have successfully used NMR to analyze the structure of infinitesimal gold nanoparticles, which could advance the development and use of the tiny particles in drug development. Their approach offers a significant advantage over routine methods for analyzing gold nanoparticles because it can determine whether the nanoparticles exist in a both right-handed and left-handed configuration, a phenomenon called chirality. Determining a nanoparticle’s chirality is an important step toward developing them as chiral catalysts — tools that are highly sought-after by the pharmaceutical industry. Their results are published online at ACS Nano. Many drugs on the market today contain at least one molecule that is chiral. Often only one of the configurations, or isomers, is effective in the body. In some cases, the other isomer may even be harmful. A striking example is the drug thalidomide, which consisted of two isomers: one of which helped pregnant women control nausea while the other caused damage to the developing fetus. In an effort to create safer, more effective drugs, drug manufacturers are looking for ways to produce purer substances that contain only the left- or right-handed isomer.

 Dec 08, 2011, Jocelyn Duffy, Carnegie-Mellon University