Tracing Vitamin C in a Fluorescent Way to Treat Cancer

Vitamin C (chemical name ascorbic acid) is a nutrient that is essential to complete the requirements of our body.  According to recent studies, Vitamin C has shown its potential against many cancers.

Vitamin C is being used as a medication, but before that it is essential to enquire of its concentration in the body, so that we can ensure its safe and effective doses. While experimenting, it is a tough task to monitor changing levels of a delivered drug. Vitamin C in the body can be traced by fluorescence; however, the existing probes use light of the wrong wavelength to insert living tissue in the subject. Now, a team led by the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science has developed a new method that could shine a path to ascorbic acid in the target. It is being considered very crucial as a cancer treatment methodology. In their latest experiment ascorbic acid levels were tracked in mice using a complex molecule R2c. very smartly it has been designed to react with ascorbic acid molecules in the body of the subject. R2c was injected into mice's tails. It was found that after an hour the entire body was looking fluorescent, reflecting the ascorbic acid naturally present in the mice, as the R2c probe was circulating through the bloodstream it its body. The probe is highly sensitive, thus extra care is expected. It was concluded that for clinical treatment of cancer, it is going to be an amazing help to efficiently deliver the drug to the right parts of the body.

By: Anita Aishvarya

Content: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-vitamin-body-tracked-fluorescence.html