{"id":1042629,"date":"2012-05-06T15:52:04","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T15:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longevitymedicine.tv\/self-assembling-nanoparticles-to-target-unwanted-cells\/"},"modified":"2024-08-17T16:58:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T20:58:54","slug":"self-assembling-nanoparticles-to-target-unwanted-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/longevity-medicine\/self-assembling-nanoparticles-to-target-unwanted-cells.php","title":{"rendered":"Self-Assembling Nanoparticles to Target Unwanted Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An example of ongoing work to make <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fightaging.org\/archives\/2006\/10\/cancer-cells-are-different-so-target-the-differenc.php\">targeted cell-killing technologies<\/a> economically practical: \"For more than a decade, researchers have been trying to develop <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nanoparticle\">nanoparticles<\/a> that would deliver drugs more effectively and safely. The idea is that a nanoparticle containing a drug compound could selectively target tumor cells or otherwise diseased cells, and avoid healthy ones. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antibody\">Antibodies<\/a> or other molecules can be attached to the nanoparticle and used to precisely identify target cells. ... [Researchers] devised a method by which the building blocks of the nanoparticle and the drug self-assemble into a final product. Two types of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polymer\">polymer<\/a> combine to form the tangled mesh of [a] drug-laden spherical nanoparticle. One of these polymers has two chemically and structurally distinct regions, or 'blocks': a water-insoluble block that forms part of the mesh that encapsulates the drug, and a water-soluble block that gives the final product a stealthy corona to evade the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Immune_system\">immune system<\/a>. The other type of polymer has three blocks: the same two as the first, as well as a third region that contains a targeting molecule - the signal that will ensure the final particles attach to the desired cell types. The drug-carrying nanoparticles are formed by simply mixing these polymers together with the drug in the appropriate conditions. The self-assembling polymers can be produced in a repeatable and scalable fashion. But the method has an additional benefit ... The method by which the nanoparticles are built - from individual preparations of the two-block and three-block polymers - would also let researchers use high-throughput screening approaches, akin to how medicinal chemists design and test new drug compounds. Each block could be tweaked - extend one block, change the charge on another - and the relative amounts of each polymer could be varied. With so many parameters for tinkering, [scientists] can screen many combinations.\"<\/p>\n<p><span>Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/biomedicine\/40347\/\">http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/biomedicine\/40347\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Source:<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.longevitymeme.org\/newsletter\/latest_rss_feed.cfm\">http:\/\/www.longevitymeme.org\/newsletter\/latest_rss_feed.cfm<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An example of ongoing work to make targeted cell-killing technologies economically practical: \"For more than a decade, researchers have been trying to develop nanoparticles that would deliver drugs more effectively and safely. The idea is that a nanoparticle containing a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/longevity-medicine\/self-assembling-nanoparticles-to-target-unwanted-cells.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1246678],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-longevity-medicine"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}