New nontoxic nanoparticles for delivering drug cargo developed

17 November 2008

Drug delivery to a specific location in the body is always a concern for medical professionals and various researches are being carried out at different parts of the globe to make it safe and efficient. An interdisciplinary group of researchers at Penn State University has developed a new nontoxic nanoparticle that is more effective in delivering drug cargo as well as fluorescent dye to the specific locations.

The scientists from various disciplines including material scientists, physicists, bioengineers, pharmacologists and chemists worked together to develop a 20 to 50 nm size calcium phosphate nanoparticle that was found to deliver drug or dye cargo inside the cell and which dissolve after delivering the cargo. A high speed laser technique known as “time correlated single photon counting” was used for measuring the nanoparticle size during its diffusion in solution.

Scientists later changed the pH of the solution similar to the surrounding of the tumors. As soon as the pH of the solution was made acidic resembling to the surrounding of tumors, calcium phosphate nanoparticles were dissolved by the acidic solution and the technique helped researchers to simulate the conditions. The researchers got anidea that on reducing pH of the solution; the dye or drug can effectively be released to the particular location inside the body.

The nanoparticles were developed by professor Jim Adir and his students and they found that these calcium phosphate nanoparticles can act as a drug delivery device and it has many advantages over the conventional drug delivery system. Researchers believe that by encapsulation of the drug, they can reduce the cost of drug and at the same time can make the treatment much more effective.

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