Nanofactories can Make and Deliver Targeted Drugs Inside the Body
March 5, 2007
The list of side effects on your prescription bottle may one day be a lot shorter, according to researchers at the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. That’s because instead of taking a conventional medication, you may swallow tiny “nanofactories,” biochemical machines that act like cells, first conceived of at the Clark School. For example, these ingested nanofactories, using magnetism, could detect a bacterial infection, produce a medication using the body’s own materials, and deliver a dose directly to the bacteria. The drug would do its work only at the infection site, and thus not cause the side effects that may arise when an antibiotic travels throughout the body in search of infections. (Nanowerk News)