Green tea’s quantum gunpowder wipes out some cancer cells

In 10 seconds? Researchers accidentally discovered that nanoparticles extracted from tea leaves in the lab could kill cancer cells.

Wow, how did they do it? Scientists were trying to find a cheap and less toxic way to image tumors (helpful for cancer diagnosis) using a technology called quantum dots. Typically, quantum dots – a type of tiny fluorescent nanoparticles – help recreate images of tumors in cancer care. Their production involves a highly toxic metal, cadmium and is pretty costly. The teams came up with the bright idea of trying to create quantum dots in a non-toxic way, using the light-emitting feature of chlorophyll from tea-leaf extracts.