Here's a glimpse at a potential future transporter of cancer drugs. Nanowerk News has shed some light on National Science Foundation-funded research of metal nanoparticles, which researchers have managed to remotely control in water to pick up, haul and drop off a payload.
Researchers from Arizona State University and the University of California, San Diego, have shown that the nanoparticles are mighty little things that can carry objects that are 30 times the size of the nanoparticles themselves, according to the Nanowerk article. Yet the piece also notes that fuels such as hydrogen peroxide have been key ingredients in the water to help the tiny particles move.
An actual medical application of the technology seems many years away, and, according to Nanowerk's report, the nano-swimmers could be put to work outside of the drug-delivery field to clean up contamination and spot environmental hazards. Still, other researchers have already begun studying magnetic nanoparticles specifically for delivering drugs, amid the continuing search for more effective and safer transport for drugs to specific sites in the body.
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