The RA Warrior, a blog devoted to information about rheumatoid arthritis, takes us on a tour of the Syracuse University lab of Rebecca Bader, assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering at the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute. There, Bader is exploring new methods of drug delivery for rheumatoid arthritis treatments like methotrexate.
Bader is using biodegradable polysaccharides to make nanoparticle drug carriers. Because the pore size of RA is between 10 and 1,000 nanometers, while healthy tissue may only be five nanometers wide, this method can target only the tissue affected by RA. You may have caught the key ingredient used here is polysaccharides--the blogger cannot help but to declare that "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."
"We chose to start with sugars because they are naturally compatible with the body and easy to break down, so you won't have an extra induced inflammatory or immunogenic response," the blog quotes Bader as saying.
Incidentally, Bader also blogs about running and has recovered from a hip injury enough to run in the Boston Marathon this year.
- read the whole post on the RA Warrior blog