SANS - Survey on application security programs <\/p>\n
US scientists have tackled two main stumbling blocks to the development of injectable nanomachines for medical and scientific use. <\/p>\n
The breakthroughs were announced in a paper entitled \"Virus-Inspired Membrane Encapsulation of DNA Nanostructures To Achieve In Vivo Stability\", published in the journal ACS Nano on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Scientists from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard said they had worked out how to protect DNA nanostructures from nuclease degradation (when an enzyme found in blood breaks the bonds which hold DNA together), and also how to stop them triggering inflammatory immune system responses. <\/p>\n
This gets rid of one of the main roadblocks to a future when illnesses such as cancer are treated via targeted \"smart\" medicine rather than extremely blunt tools such as chemotherapy, and people can augment their own bodies with swarms of nano machines: rejection by the body. <\/p>\n
Here on El Reg's science faction desk we've spoken to boffins about breakthroughs such as programmable synthetic circuits and nanomotors that can be inserted into cells. <\/p>\n
But as exciting as these breakthroughs are, they're worthless if the injectable nanomachines set off immune responses as they flow around the body and it's that barrier which the Wyss researchers think they have overcome. <\/p>\n
The boffins made this breakthrough by taking inspiration from how naturally occurring viruses are able to infiltrate the body. <\/p>\n
They were able to cloak the nanomachines by creating a \"DNA NanoOctahedron\" scaffold which had a diameter of around 50 nanometers, which was then coated it in a lipid layer (a \"liposome\"). <\/p>\n
They refined this design by giving the NanoOctahedron some \"outer handles\" to better bind the lipids onto it. This design ultimately proved resilient to nuclease degradation and also stopped immune system flare-ups. <\/p>\n
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STEALTHY NANOROBOTS dress up as viruses, prepare to sneak into YOUR BODY<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SANS - Survey on application security programs US scientists have tackled two main stumbling blocks to the development of injectable nanomachines for medical and scientific use. The breakthroughs were announced in a paper entitled \"Virus-Inspired Membrane Encapsulation of DNA Nanostructures To Achieve In Vivo Stability\", published in the journal ACS Nano on Tuesday. Scientists from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard said they had worked out how to protect DNA nanostructures from nuclease degradation (when an enzyme found in blood breaks the bonds which hold DNA together), and also how to stop them triggering inflammatory immune system responses Continue reading