Shaping drug delivery

There is considerable interest in the use of carbon nanotubes for targeted drug and gene delivery, for which issues relating to the acceptance and containment of drugs or genes are not properly understood. A spheroid is an ellipsoid with two equal axes and the general spheroidal shape includes a wide variety of possible molecular configurations such as spheres, capped cylindrical tubes and ellipsoids of revolution, and therefore the determination of the interaction forces for this general shape may have many applications. Phenomena such as the suction of fullerenes into carbon nanotubes due to the van der Waals interatomic interactions and ultra-low friction of a molecule moving inside a carbon nanotube give rise to the possibility of constructing nanoscaled oscillators with frequencies in the gigahertz range.

Cox et al, 2007, Mechanics of spheroidal fullerenes and carbon nanotubes for drug and gene delivery, The Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics 2007 60(2):231-253; doi:10.1093/qjmam/hbm005

accessed through OxfordJournals.org




Polymeric nanoparticles bear significant potential for ATD delivery to the brain.

The development of a drug carrier that can efficiently deliver its encapsulated contents (ATDs) to the brain would be welcomed as a therapeutic strategy. Nanoparticlebased systems for brain drug delivery are being developed.

Oxfordjournals.org



Tiny diamonds deliver anti-cancer drugs

Nanodiamonds – a new class of nanomaterials – can efficiently deliver chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells. This is according to scientists at Northwestern University in the US who used clusters of the material to ferry doxorubicin, a widely used anti-tumour drug, into human colorectal carcinoma cells. The technique might also find use in other biomedical applications, such as fighting tuberculosis or viral infections.

Carbon-based nanostructures, such as fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, have received much attention as potential drug carriers. However, researchers are still unsure as to how biocompatible these materials are. Moreover, carbon nanotubes are not soluble in water, which further limits their widespread use.

This is where nanodiamonds come in: they are non-toxic and water soluble, and do not cause cell inflammation, unlike other commonly employed drug-delivery systems. Inflammation is a serious matter and can predispose a patient to further cancer, block the activity of anti-cancer drugs and even promote tumor growth.

The new system could allow for more sophisticated ways of targeting cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact.

.........Researchers started out with single nanodiamonds that measure just 2 nm across. The researchers then produced clusters of nanodiamonds, ranging from 50 to 100 nm in diameter. An anti-cancer drug loaded onto the surface of the cluster only became active when the cluster reached its target, where it then broke apart and slowly released the drug.

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/31725



Molecular Structure

The tropocollagen or "collagen molecule" is a subunit of larger collagen aggregates such as fibrils. It is approximately 300 nm long and 1.5 nm in diameter........
wikipedia