Forget an apple a day; scientists are working on a pill that would be much more successful in the ongoing battle to find a way to keep the doctor away by giving you medicine without your even knowing about it.
New Scientist reports that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed nanoparticles to target artery walls around the heart and release small quantities of drugs on a timed basis decided upon by a doctor beforehand. Professor Omid Farokhzad of Harvard Medical School was part of the research team at MIT:
Here we take a big leap forward by developing nanotechnologies that can do the same thing without interventional techniques that commonly involve taking a patient to the cardiac catherisation lab where stents are placed... It's another example of the huge impact that nanotechnology will have on medicine. You can rationally design therapeutics that are targeted and release their drugs in a pre-programmed way and these may go far beyond our current state-of-the-art approaches in safety and efficacy.
It's not exactly a nanoparticle that will fight off any disease or damage in a preventative manner, but it might be the first step. Here's to our healthy nanoparticled future.
Under the weather? Just swallow a doctor [Independent.co.uk]