MIT Researchers In Gold Nanoparticle Drug Delivery Breakthrough

A team lead by Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, assistant professor of biological and mechanical engineering at MIT has discovered a method to use gold particles and infrared to release multiple drugs in a systematic and controlled manner.

This is of particular importance when treating diseases like cancer and AIDS which require multi drug and coordinated dosage cocktails.

The new technique takes advantage of the fact that when gold nano particles are exposed to infrared light, they melt and release drug payloads attached to their surfaces.

Nanoparticles of different shapes respond to different infrared wavelengths, so “just by controlling the infrared wavelength, we can choose the release time” for each drug, said Andy Wijaya, graduate student in chemical engineering and lead author of the paper.

More information from MIT is available here with an interesting diagram here.

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