Nanoparticle programs advance the science of small

Researchers at MIT are advancing their work on nanoparticles that mimic blood platelets in order to deliver chemotherapies directly to tumors or for cancer imaging. The nanoparticles are designed to slip through tumor blood vessels so they can cluster in the tumor and be identified with imaging technology. A team of scientists are using a five-year, $4.3 million grant National Cancer Institute grant for their work.

The program is somewhat similar to a new project at Johns Hopkins which has developed nanoparticles that mimic viruses so they can slip through layers of mucus. During experiments with these coated particles, the researchers also discovered that mucus layers have much larger pores than previously thought, providing a doorway that should allow larger and longer-acting doses of medicine to reach protected tissue.

- here's the UPI report on the MIT project
- and here's the report from Johns Hopkins

ALSO: A novel approach to synthesizing nanowires allows their direct integration with microelectronic systems for the first time, as well as their ability to act as highly sensitive biomolecule detectors that could advance biological diagnostic applications, according to a report in Nature. Not only can the nanowires detect as few as 1000 individual molecules in a cubic millimeter, they can do it without any added fluorescent or radioactive probes. Report

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