Brilliant 10: Shawn Douglas Programs DNA Nanorobots to Kill Cancer
Shawn Douglas Courtesy Shawn DouglasThe clamshell-shaped machine made of DNA is the first to work with a mission in mind Shawn Douglas grew up building R/C cars and planes, using skills he picked up from his repairman father. Two decades later, he's still assembling machines-only they're now a billionth the size, made from DNA, and designed to destroy cancer cells. Other labs have worked with DNA to build distinct shapes-a process colloquially known as DNA origami-but most have produced nonfunctional objects. At the University of California at San Francisco, Douglas folds his to have a mission. "He is the first to have realized the dream of a truly programmable container for delivering therapies to cells in a targeted way," says Paul Rothemund, a biochemical engineer at Caltech. Shawn DouglasAge 31University of California at San FranciscoDouglas's nanomachine looks like a clamshell, its halves clasped together by two sets of entwined double-stranded...