Physics News

Tiny nanoprobes have shown to be effective in delivering cancer drugs more directly to tumor cells ? mitigating the damage to nearby healthy cells ? and Purdue University research has shown that the nanoprobes are getting the drugs to right cellular compartments.Professor Joseph Irudayaraj and graduate student Jiji Chen, both in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, have found that the nanoprobes, or nanorods, when coated with the breast cancer drug Herceptin, are reaching the endosomes of cells, mimicking the delivery of the drug on its own.

"We have demonstrated the ability to track these nanoparticles in different cellular compartments of live cells and show where they collect quantitatively," said Irudayaraj, whose results were published early online in the journal ACS Nano. "Our methods will allow us to calculate the quantities of a drug needed to treat a cancer cell because now we know how these nanoparticles are being distributed to different parts of the cell."
"Each nanoparticle acts like a deliverer of a mail package, or dose, of the drug directly to the appropriate location," Irudayaraj said.