Nanocage Opens and Closes As Light Beams Dictate

Reported by Softpedia on Friday, 20 November 2009 (on November 20, 2009)

Containers at the nanoscale are nothing new, as they have been demonstrated for several years, but innovative, new applications and improvements appear almost daily. In a new research, scientists at the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL) have managed to produce a new type of nanocage that is able to open and release its contents when light is shone upon it. While this is nothing new (the technology has already been showcased by other research groups as well), the WUSL addition is the fact that the nanocages can also close back up, when light is no longer shining on them. This type of structures is extremely important for the field of medicine, mostly because doctors are able to load vaccines or various chemicals and vitamins into the cages, and then inject them inside a patient. Specially designed proteins on the surface of the nanostructures detect a tumor, for example, and then quickly proceed towards it. Once there, an infrared, visible, or ultraviolet laser can be used to trigger the release of their cargo. This type of localized exposure to drugs is of tremendous importance. In the case of cancer, chemotherapy drugs are known to have large numbers of side-effects, but they are widely accepted because there is no other method of keeping the patients alive long enough for new treatments to ...

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