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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