Sticking plaster Rama
Chinese researchers have developed a wireless, paper-thin patch that attaches to an organ to create a highway for drug delivery.
To solve an important problem in drug delivery, a research team that includes Beihang University and Peking University developed an electronic patch that acts like a band-aid for organs.
Traditional drug delivery systems send a vague package through the body that requires higher doses than necessary and might harm organs in the process of trying to find their destination. Large-molecule drugs, or biopharmaceuticals based on proteins, face an even greater challenge as the cell membrane often blocks these drugs, according to CGTN.
Several innovations are currently happening in the space to maximize the effectiveness of drugs by optimizing their efficiency. The latest from China combines flexible electronics and micro-nano processing technologies to communicate and facilitate the target and how to get there.
“It holds great promise for future treatments of major health issues like cancer and trauma,” Chang Lingqian said, a professor at Beihang University’s School of Biological and Medical Engineering.
A bioelectronic platform for drug delivery
As reported in Nature on April 30, Chinese researchers engineered a battery-free, chipless, soft nanofluidic intracellular delivery patch that provided enhanced and customized delivery of payloads in targeted internal organs, the study explains.
The NanoFLUID “band-aid” integrates flexible electronics and micro-nano processing technologies to create a wireless power supply that assists the drugs in arriving at their desired location.
“It can safely perforate cell membranes at low voltage and, through the ultra-high electric field strength formed within its nano-pores, deliver drug molecules to the target site rapidly and precisely,” CGTN reports.
“The nanopore-microchannel-microelectrode structure enables the safe, efficient, and precise electroperforation of the cell membrane, which in turn accelerates intracellular payload transport approximately 105 times compared with conventional diffusion methods while operating under relatively low-amplitude pulses,” the study continues.
Highway for drugs
They tested the NanoFLUID patch in multiple scenarios, including treating breast tumors and acute liver injury, and modelling tumor development. They validated its efficiency, safety, and controllability for organ-targeted delivery.
“NanoFLUID-mediated in vivo transfection of a gene library also enabled efficient screening of essential drivers of breast cancer metastasis in the lung and liver,” as per the study.
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Aside from performing its function as a drug delivery system, the NanoFLUID also picked up on information about the disease. The approach identified DUS2 as a lung-specific metastasis driver.
“Thus, NanoFLUID represents an innovative bioelectronic platform for the targeted delivery of payloads to internal organs to treat various diseases and to uncover new insights in biology.”
Described as a “highway for drug delivery,” the patch could additionally lead to new insights in screenings and evaluations about the interworkings of the disease.
“This study has already been applied in medical aesthetics and skin trauma repair, and it holds great promise for future treatments of major health issues like cancer and trauma,” Chang concluded in a press release.
The findings were published in Nature.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria Mocerino Originally from LA, Maria Mocerino has been published in Business Insider, The Irish Examiner, The Rogue Mag, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, and now Interesting Engineering.
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