Tiny grenades deliver drugs by detonation Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Read more: www.newscientist.com Nanoparticles packed with drugs can be delivered quickly to tissue if they are loaded into larger exploding capsules Video: Nanoparticles packed with drugs can be delivered to tissue faster if they are loaded into larger exploding capsules (Footage courtesy ACS) Detonating explosives near sick people is not generally a good idea, but microscopic grenades that go off painlessly inside the body could accelerate the delivery of drugs to diseased tissue, say researchers. Carbon nanotubes and other nanomaterials are touted as being perfect "mules" to deliver drugs because they can pass freely into cells and even cell nuclei. But the tiny structures diffuse very slowly through biological tissue, which could limit their therapeutic benefit. Typically, 200-nanometre particles take nearly 9 hours to diffuse just 400 micrometers in water, says Bruno De Geest, a chemical engineer at Ghent University in Belgium. But De Geest and colleagues can propel nanoparticles the same distance 800 times faster by hurling them from an exploding microscopic grenade. Sweet centre Their tiny grenades are made from a rigid but porous polymer membrane that contains a gel based on the sugar dextran. As water seeps through the membrane it degrades the chemical cross-links holding the gel together. The gel swells and eventually bursts the capsule open, spewing its contents outwards. De Geest's team loaded the gel with green fluorescent nanoparticles to make it possible to ...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQFuO0TCESA&hl=en