Smart Particles

The new frontline in the fight against diseases is at the nanoscale – a size comparable to a cluster of atoms – where smart nanoparticles loaded with drugs track and burrow deep inside their target before releasing therapeutic agents just where they're needed. Half the challenge is designing nanoparticles that bind to and attack only specific sites or cells, like this bone cancer cell (with DNA coloured blue, cellular skeleton in purple and energy-making centres in yellow). In a showcase experiment, researchers coated polymer nanoparticles laden with an anti-cancer agent using alendronate, a chemical taken up rapidly by bone cells, before injecting it into mice with bone cancer. And sure enough, the treatment slowed the spread of the cancer and prolonged the mice's lives. Although more research is needed to ensure the treatment's safety, smart nanoparticles stand to revolutionise medicine by one day consigning coarse treatments like chemotherapy to history.

Written by Tristan Farrow

Tristan Farrow

Writer

British Science Association Media Fellow. He holds a degree in quantum physics from the University of Cambridge and a Research Fellowship in quantum effects in biology.

• Image by Dylan Burnette and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health
• Copyright held by National Institutes of Health
• Research published in PNAS, July 2014