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Thursday, April 25, 2019

Nano-medicine expected to treat chronic illnesses


              Whether it’s the hair loss, the nauseating fatigue, or the never-ending stream of pills, anyone who’s ever experienced cancer knows that treatment can be downright distressing. Traditional chemotherapy has a knack for attacking healthy cells in addition to the troublesome malignant ones, resulting in the aforementioned afflictions. But what if we could treat cancer without the debilitating side effects? What if we could target drugs at the offending cells only and release them precisely when we needed to?

             Adah Almutairi, co-director of the Center for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has developed a technology involving light-activated nanoparticles that could potentially do just that. Using matter on the scale of 100nm, Almutairi and her research team placed drug molecules into tiny little balls she calls nanospheres. Almutairi’s invention isn’t unique in principle. In fact, targeted drug delivery has been at the forefront of research in the burgeoning field of nanomedicine for quite some time. Scientists first tried delivering drugs through liposomes, spherical vesicles that naturally assemble due to the properties of its constituent phospholipids.

             That’s where Almutairi’s model might have struck gold. Not only are her nanospheres “stable as a rock”, but they’re also perfectly safe. According to her, the nanospheres can “stay intact for a year before safely degrading,” as proven in animal trials with mice. The significance of that is monumental, demonstrating non-toxicity may be the first step in getting her invention on the market.

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