Two million times smaller than an ant: nanotubes can deliver drugs to precisely defined areas within cells

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have developed leak-proof microscopic nanotubes, two million times smaller than an ant and a million times thinner than a human hair, that can be used to deliver drugs to specific areas of patients’ bodies. Nanotubes deliver drugs into specific cells with a diameter of 7 nanometers. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have created tiny nanotubes, about two million times smaller than an ant, a million times thinner than a human hair, and several microns in length, or about the length of a dust particle. The researchers designed the tubes to have the ability to repair themselves and attach to various vital structures, and they achieved this by building nanotubes from DNA fragments that encourage them to regenerate and search for the structures they attach to. “In our case, we can also connect these tubes to different end points to form something like a plumbing network,” explained Rebecca Schulman, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, who led the study. These nanotubes are a major step toward developing a network of nanotubes that may one day carry specialized drugs, proteins and molecules to specific cells in the human body. Read also: Nanotechnology: How is human life changing on a finite scale

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