Subcelluar Targeting

Among nanotechnology’s most promising applications in medicine is the ability, not only to target tumor cells, but to deliver anticancer drugs to specific organelles within cells and thereby kills malignant growths.  Collaborating researchers in Glendale, AZ and Boston, MA have devised a lipid envelope containing a tumor suppressor lipid, ceramide.   One of ceramide’s functions is to act as a signaling molecule-regulating cellular development, proliferation and apoptosis.  The envelope is too big to pass through normal blood vessel walls, but can penetrate the larger gaps in tumor blood vessel walls.  The researchers then added a molecule that accumulates in mitrochondria-causing that organelle to cease producing the energy that keeps cancer cells alive.  MORE

Image  Credit: Volkmar Weissig  and Technology Review