PHARMACEUTICAL DRUG DELIVERY USING NANO SWIMMERS
7/28/14 Micro and nano are making waves in the medical field. We came across an interesting article online published by Nano Letters Publication.
Artificial nanomotors in blood opens the door in the medical industry from microsurgeyr to targeted drug delivery.
Nanomotors have been successful in the past in liquids such as water, but the chemistry in blood has puzzled scientists until now.
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have successfully created a ‘nano swimmer’ – an artificial structure that can move through undiluted human blood to probe the local environment and deliver medicine.
“They have integrated conformal ferrite coatings with magnetic nanohelices, which offers a promising combination of functionalities for having controlled motion in practical biological fluids, such as chemical stability, cytocompatibility, and the generated thrust.
These coatings were found to be stable in various biofluids, including human blood, even after overnight incubation, and did not have significant influence on the propulsion efficiency of the magnetically driven nanohelices, thereby facilitating the first successful “voyage” of artificial nanomotors in human blood. The motion of the “nanovoyager” was found to show interesting stick–slip dynamics, an effect originating in the colloidal jamming of blood cells in the plasma. The system of magnetic “nanovoyagers” was found to be cytocompatible with C2C12 mouse myoblast cells, as confirmed using MTT assay and fluorescence microscopy observations of cell morphology. Taken together, the results presented in this work establish the suitability of the “nanovoyager” with conformal ferrite coatings toward biomedical applications.”
They have done this study on collected human blood. The next step would be to put it in actual human system that would require more study.
Ghosh said that his team was in talks with cancer specialists and biologists to check the motion of the nano voyagers in cancerous tissue, potential cancer diagnostics and also help in the delivery of drugs.
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