A cone-shaped variety of carbon nanotubes called nanohorns may be able to trigger an immune response to fight infectious diseases and cancers, a team of French and Italian scientists has claimed.

White blood cells can easily detect and capture the tiny nanotube like structures making it difficult for the researchers trying to use them as vehicles, to deliver drugs inside the body in a targeted way.

These nanotubes also prompt severe immune reactions.

The research team is now using nanohorns to deliberately push immune system into action.

They believe that this uninvited immune response can push the body into fighting a disease or cancer more effectively.

For the study, Alberto Bianco and Helene Dumortier at the CNRS Institute in Strasbourg, France, in collaboration with Maurizio Prato at the University of Trieste, Italy, gave carbon nanohorns to mouse white blood cells in a Petri dish. The macrophage cells' job is to swallow foreign particles.

They found that after 24 hours, most of the macrophages had swallowed some nanohorns and also started to release reactive oxygen compounds and other small molecules that give an indication to other parts of the immune system to become more active.

By filling the interior of nanohorns with particular antigens, like ice cream filling a cone, the team believes that they can adjust the immune response to fight a particular disease or cancer.

"The nanohorns would deliver the antigen to the macrophages while also triggering a cascade of pro-inflammatory effects," New Scientist quoted Dumortier, as saying.