Tiny "glass bottles" deliver drugs on demand when heated

[기사내용]

[출처] https://newatlas.com/tiny-bottles-deliver-drugs-precisely/61065/ 

The design of the new drug delivery system is quite clever. The "bottles" are hollow spheres made of silica and measuring about 200 nanometers wide, with a hole in the surface. These spheres can be packed with basically any drug that's needed. To keep the payload in place until it gets to the right spot, the drug is mixed with fatty acids and a near-infrared dye. When a doctor wants to release the drug, they simply shine an infrared laser on the relevant area. The dye in the spheres absorbs the heat from the laser and melts the fatty acids, releasing the medical payload through the hole. This prevents the drug from leaking into healthy cells where it can do harm. To make the capsules, the team starts with spheres of polystyrene with a gold nanoparticle embedded in it, which are then coated in a silica material. When the polystyrene and gold is removed, they're left with hollow silica spheres, and the size of the holes can be tweaked by using bigger or smaller gold particles. The team tested the system by putting these nanocapsules in water, and tracking the levels of therapeutics in that water over time as they used an infrared laser on them. They found that when the laser wasn't used the drugs didn't escape into the water, but within a few minutes of heating, concentrations of the chemicals rose in the water. Others include a swallowable star-shaped capsule that releases multiple doses over a week, drugs bound together with DNA that degrades at different intervals, a Bluetooth-controlled implant, nanobubbles filled with chemotherapy drugs that are burst with X-rays, and even bacteria that carry drugs and release them on demand through ultrasound pulses .

[시사점]

Polystyrene과 Gold 를 이용하여 틀을 만들고 구멍을 낸 silica spheres 에 약물과 지방산에 섞어 탑재하고 IR을 이용하여 약물이 빠져나오게 하는 방법이다. 우리가 만들려고 하는 0 4 MCS 와 비슷한 개념을 가지고 있다. 다만 Vehicle 의 종류가 다르고 IR 을 이용해서 녹아내는 것이 다르다.