Mixing gold salts with common black tea creates a brew that shows "promising anticancer properties, according to a report entitled Green nanotechnology from tea: Phytochemicals in tea as building blocks for production of biocompatible gold nanoparticles published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Researchers from the University of Missouri-Columbia, supported by the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, discovered that the chemicals present in tea "are the best yet discovered to make consistent, biologically safe gold nanoparticles." The gold nanoparticles created in a simple cup of, in this case, Darjeeling tea, show promising anticancer properties.

The research team, headed by Kattesh V. Katti, Ph.D., M.Sc.Ed., principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute-funded Hybrid Nanoparticles in Imaging and Therapy of Prostate Cancer Platform Partnership, added gold salts to a pot of Darjeeling tea. The salts are reduced by the tea’s phytochemicals, ingredients that also have proven health benefits. Fortuitously, the tea chemicals that regulate the size of these nanoparticles also increase their likelihood of being taken into breast and prostate cancer cells, improving their potential as targeted anticancer drugs. The nanoparticles are also highly stable in biological fluids.

"The discovery of tea’s nontoxic formation of nanoparticles is of paramount importance for medical and technological applications," Katti said. "Gold nanoparticles have many potential medicinal and technological uses, such as targeted anticancer drugs, but currently their synthesis needs toxic reagents that make them unsuitable for use in the body. The natural chemicals used in this new method are harmless in the body, and the reaction produces no toxic byproducts, only some slightly unusual tasting cold tea."