<span style="color: #222222;">Researchers in the University of Sheffield in Britain recently developed a new technique that could make light-based cancer treatment more effective and safer for patients while reducing its cost.<br />'' <br />'' Light-based or photo-dynamic therapy is already a clinically-approved treatment, which uses drugs that only work when exposed to light to destroy cancer cells. However, many of these drugs are frequently toxic even without light, causing many side effects in patients and leading to treatment failure.<br />'' <br />'' In a press release, the University of Sheffield said, study carried out by Jose Ricardo Aguilar Cosme, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield and overseen by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Department of Oncology and Metabolism, has developed tiny carbon nanoparticles that can deliver cancer drugs to tumours. <br />'' <br />'' The researchers have sought to improve these drugs by using small carbon dots as a way to get the drug to the tumour. </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"><br />'' Carbon dots are fluorescent nanoparticles with very little toxicity, making them extremely useful for this application. Two different versions of the carbon dots were developed as part of the research, one with the drug bound on the surface and the other where the drug was inside the dot. <br />'' <br />'' Helen Bryant, who has supervised the research, said the research has the potential to produce cheaper anti-cancer drugs with greater efficiency to kill tumours and less side-effects in patients.</span><br />'' <br />''