#nanoparticle

Recorded Delivery

Visualising the interaction between drug-delivering nanoparticles and tumour cells to help optimise this kind of targeted cancer therapy

Read the published research paper here

Still from video from work by Zeying Cao and Yanli Zhao, and colleagues

Center for Drug Delivery System, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai & Lingang Laboratory, Shanghai, China

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, August 2023

Scientists have developed a nanoparticle injection for the eye which converts infrared into visible light allowing night vision for up to 10 weeks. The injection has worked on mice in research trials. – WTF Fun Facts

Nanoparticle eats plaques responsible for heart attacks.

Atherosclerosis is a disease in which plaque builds up inside the body’s arteries, the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood to the heart and other organs of the body. Plaque is made up of white immune blood cells, known as macrophages, fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances found in the blood. As this plaque hardens it narrows the arteries, limiting the flow of oxygen-rich blood…

Silver nanoparticles (Ag NP) – what are they, and what do they do?

Silver nanoparticles – they're in almost everything; your food, clothes, laundry detergent, cosmetics... But what are they? What do they do? Their presence is becoming more prominent and people are beginning to question it. Silver nanoparticles have been beneficial for humans thus far, and have had numerous studies showing that they have no significant negative effects on humans. The problem with silver nanoparticles is the detrimental effects they have on the environment.

So, what are silver nanoparticles? Well, a nanoparticle is anything that is 1-100 nanometres in size (a nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre). And a silver nanoparticle is, obviously, exactly as it is named. Its unique in that it is antimicrobial and non-toxic to humans and animals, so it became very popular in pretty much everything that humans don't want to have germs.

These particles end up in the water system from various routes such as the dumping of waste during production, garbage disposal, wet clothes drying outside, etc. The precise issues this may cause have not yet been narrowed down because a lot of the studies researching this issue are long-term and have not yet been finished. Some short-term studies have found that the silver nanoparticles may bioaccumulate (when a substance accumulates in the flesh/fat of an individual) in fish, becoming toxic over time. It may also inhibit the growth of algae.

One of the long-term studies not yet completed is the overall effect that these silver nanoparticles have on a food chain. Even if, hypothetically, they affect nothing but bacteria or microfauna (microscopic animals), killing the bacteria could result in either an explosion of their food species, or a reduction in their predator, which would result in trophic cascade (a collapse of the entire food chain).

~Rosie

Image: http://bit.ly/1GUJdo8

Sources: http://bit.ly/19T7fT7

Abstract: Researchers at Oregon State University have developed an improved technique for using magnetic nanoclusters to kill hard-to-reach tumors.

Magnetic nanoparticles – tiny pieces of matter as small as one-billionth of a meter – have shown anti-cancer promise for tumors easily accessible by syringe, allowing the particles to be injected directly into the cancerous growth.

Once injected…

Synthetic opioids outlast current antidotes. A nanoparticle-based alternative could fix that.

A newly developed single-dose opioid antidote lasts several days, a study in mice shows. If the results can be duplicated in humans, the treatment may one day help prevent overdoses from deadly drugs like fentanyl.

Normally, a dose of the opioid antidote naloxone passes through a person’s body in about 30 minutes — far too quickly to fully counteract the effects of such synthetic opioids as fentanyl and carfentanil (SN Online: 5/1/18). These drugs, tens to thousands of times stronger than morphine, can linger in a person’s system for hours or even days (SN: 6/10/17, p. 22). That requires multiple doses of an antidote to prevent someone from overdosing.

So researchers developed a new naloxone-based antidote to outlast synthetic opioids by creating nanoparticles in which naloxone molecules are tangled up with a biodegradable polymer called polylactic acid. Water and enzymes in the body slowly break down these nanosized tangles, gradually releasing naloxone.

In mice, the new nanoparticle delivery system counteracted the pain-relieving effects of morphine for up to 96 hours after administering a single dose of the antidote, according to research being presented March 31 at the American Chemical Society meeting in Orlando, Fla.

“We’re now going to start moving onto fentanyl and carfentanil” and ramping up opioid doses to test whether the antidote can prevent a mouse from overdosing, says Saadyah Averick, a biomaterials researcher at the Allegheny Health Network Research Institute in Pittsburgh.