New ‘nanoburrs’ could help fight heart disease
Building on their previous work delivering cancer drugs with nanoparticles, MIT and Harvard researchers have turned their attention to cardiovascular disease, designing new particles that can cling to damaged artery walls and slowly release medicine.The particles, dubbed “nanoburrs,” are coated with tiny protein fragments that allow them to stick to damaged arterial walls. Once stuck, they can release drugs such paclitaxel, which inhibits cell division and helps prevent growth of scar tissue that can clog arteries.“This is a very exciting example of nanotechnology and cell targeting in action that I hope will have broad ramifications,” says MIT Institute Professor Langer, senior author of a paper describing the nanoparticles in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Langer and Omid Farokhzad, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and another senior author of the paper, have previously developed nanoparticles that seek out and destroy tumors. Their nanoburrs, however,...