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Self-assembling medicine-delivery cubes

All Acting Regiment

07:33 / 13.12.05

A very interesting idea. Little doctors, anyone?

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University created tiny perforated cubes the size of dust specks that self-assemble. The idea is to load the metallic cubes with medications or living cells like those used in certain therapies. Then, magnets might be used to guide the through the body to a specific site where their cargoes could then be released.

jeed

08:21 / 13.12.05

I think researchers have been playing with the idea of porous nano-things for drug delivery for a while...

dna as drug-delivery system

Buckyballs and nanotubes

But this is the first i've heard of the possibility of directing those to particular parts of the body. It could be amazing for delivering cytotoxic anti-cancer drugs, where half the problem is getting them targetted well enough to nail the tumour without nuking all the surrounding tissue - as long as they dont keep self-assembling and give you a metallic cyborg tumour to go with your meat one...

elene

10:49 / 13.12.05

Wow! Cool indeed.

18:38 / 13.12.05

jd— My understanding is they won't keep self-assembling like that because they don't self-replicate, they just self-assemble. There's a finite number of cubes, and they don't really do anything once they're folded up and inside the body. My query is more how one gets them out, and that seems pretty easy to address.

They are really pretty, though.

jeed

12:22 / 15.12.05

ah...fair enough, i only got chacne to skim the article and meant to get back to it.

I guess the bonus with the DNA version is it degenerates pretty easily, but if you can just lead these out with magnets then good stuff...

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