Nanoparticles Incubate Cancer Cells

Nanoparticles Incubate Cancer Cells

Submitted by Stephen Morton, Kevin Herlihy, Kevin Chu, Kevin Shopsowitz, and Joe DeSimone at the Koch Institute

Koch Institute at MIT, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering

Stephen Morton, Kevin Herlihy, Kevin Chu, Kevin Shopsowitz, and Joe DeSimone
Hammond Laboratory, Koch Institute
Confocal Microscopy

"This work is centered on manufacturing targeted nanomedicine (~1000X smaller than the diameter of human hair) on a large scale in a simple and reproducible fashion. In these images, we are able to incorporate PRINT® capsules, which, like printing ink on paper, can be made to any shape and size. We can also load these capsules with a wide range of drugs, either alone or in combination, and either with or without a carrier material. This allows us to make nano-sized pills with exquisite control over what it contains. To make this medicine functional and with capabilities of honing in on particular cancer cells, we are spraying on materials to generate very thin coatings that, in concert with exquisite control over the pill contents, affords us the same level of control over the materials on the surface that engage cancer cells. Altogether, spraying on PRINT® particles provides us a powerful tool for generating uniform and functional drug carriers. [This image shows] cells incubated with recovered particles sprayed with fluorescently labeled polymer used for tracking during cell uptake studies."

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