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(Funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara have been able to use a combination of gold nanorods and near-infrared light to destroy multidrug-resistant bacteria without antibiotics. These "phanorods" were applied to bacteria on in-vitro cultures of mammalian cells and then exposed to near-infrared light. The heat killed bacteria such as E. coli, P. aeruginosa, and V. cholerae.
