Nanoengineers Mine Tiny Diamonds for Drug Delivery

Recently, researchers at Northwestern University have shown that nanodiamonds can be a very effective way to deliver chemotherapy drugs. The negative effects caused by the current drug delivery agents are not present in the nanodiamond delivery method of chemotherapy drugs. Basically, this method limits the exposure of toxic drugs to the body by shielding the drug from the normal cells so as not to kill them. The nanodiamonds also don’t cause inflammation in the cell which the current method does not do which has serious adverse affects. “There are a lot of materials that can deliver drugs well, but we need to look at what happens after drug delivery…Nanodiamonds are highly ordered structures, which cells like. If they didn’t, cells would become inflamed. From a patient’s perspective, this is very important. And that’s why clinicians are interested in our work,” said Dean Ho, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University. One important aspect of the nanodiamond structure is that it provides a powerful release in a very localized place. Another fact that makes the nanodiamonds clinically important is that they are also soluble in water, unlike many other upcoming nanoparticles. This research seems to be astronomical and hopefully one day will make chemotherapy better for those that have to endure it.

http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/33585/Nanoengineers_mine_tiny_diamonds_for_drug_delivery.html