A diverse array of University of Michigan researchers (leading scientists from engineering, public health, dentistry and medicine) is exploring nanotechnology's potential for improving drug delivery, tissue regeneration and laboratory miniaturization.

In order to get the most potent anti-cancer drugs off the shelf and into the clinic, the researchers are looking at two nanotechnology approaches to precisely deliver drugs and visualize individual cells:

1) dendrimer, a star-shaped synthetic molecule that can be as small as 3 or 4 nanometers in diameter (about the size of a single molecule of hemoglobin in a red blood cell)

2) PEBBLE (probes encapsulated by biologically localized embedding), a tiny plastic bead sized at 20 to 600 nanometers can be coated with targeting molecules and used as a very precise contrast agent for imaging and drug delivery.

The ends of a dendrimer's many branching arms can be studded with molecules that bind to specific receptors on the surface of cancer cells. Other arms of the molecule can carry chemicals to mark or even kill the target cells. Injected into the bloodstream, dendrimers converge on cancer cells, then actually enter the cells. There, they deliver the drugs that kill cancer cells. In preliminary animal studies, drugs appear to be 50 to 100 times more effective with this sort of direct delivery.

Though the PEBBLEs group has done work to get the tiny balls inside cells, including using a gene gun that blasts them like little bullets and attaching them to liposomes and letting the body's own fats provide the transportation, penetration isn't always necessary to get the medical benefits. The tiny balls latched on to the outside of selected cells can deliver "killer oxygen" on cue to kill off the cell without penetrating it.

Source:[EurekAlert]