No it’s not a new fad diet – but a potential surgical breakthrough that could turn the diet industry on it’s head.
A new science startup believes they have struck gold with a new quicker and less damaging alternative to liposuction – and it’s all thanks to our favorite yellow metal.
The new fat-removal process, dubbed NanoLipo injects a solution of gold nanorods into the fatty tissue to be removed after which fat literally melts away when an infrared laser beam is aimed at the gold-filled tissue.
University of California San Diego professor and nanomedicine expert Adah Almutairi told Chemical and Engineering News “(I) thought maybe these gold particles could also be used to melt and remove fat“.
It was a personal need to lose weight five months after giving birth – a time when she was too busy to exercise but was still keen to regain her pre-pregnancy weight.
Setting her scientific mind on the problem Almutairi recalled the fact that gold nanoparticles heat up quickly when exposed to infrared light. Believing this process may help heat up excess fat, she discussed the matter with her plastic and reconstructive surgeon brother Khalid Almutairi.
Khalid believed she was on the right track. He admitted that normal liposuction can be quite a destructive procedure, with connective tissues and nerves being damaged and removed during the process – whereas with this new technique, tissue integrity would be maintained thanks to fat melting at a lower temperature to connective tissue or nerve cells.
Taking the idea into the lab Almutairi and her team tested the technique by injecting a solution of 40-nanometer gold nanorods into a butter and bacon composite.
Next using an 800-nm laser, the scientists successfully liquefied the fatty substances within a minute or two.
The Almutairis have now licensed the NanoLipo process and are continuing preclinical studies.
eLux, the company who have bought the license hope to begin a human clinical trial of NanoLipo later in 2014 and bring the product to market by 2017.
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