The Future of Medicine Rises in University City: University of Pennsylvania Opens New Multi-Disciplinary Research Labs in One uCity Square

Wexford Science & Technology, LLC and the University of Pennsylvania today announced that the University has signed a lease for new laboratory space that will usher in a wave of novel vaccine, therapeutics and engineered diagnostics research to West Philadelphia.

RNA Institute Researchers Advance DNA Nanostructure Stability

Researchers at the University at Albany’s RNA Institute have demonstrated a new approach to DNA nanostructure assembly that does not require magnesium. The method improves the biostability of the structures, making them more useful and reliable in a range of applications.

AI Used to Advance Drug Delivery System for Glaucoma and Other Chronic Diseases

Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have used artificial intelligence models and machine-learning algorithms to successfully predict which components of amino acids that make up therapeutic proteins are most likely to safely deliver therapeutic drugs to animal eye cells.

Tiny swimming robots treat deadly pneumonia in mice

UC San Diego engineers have developed microscopic robots, called microrobots, that can swim around in the lungs, deliver medication and be used to clear up life-threatening cases of bacterial pneumonia. In mice, the microrobots safely eliminated pneumonia-causing bacteria in the lungs and resulted in 100% survival. By contrast, untreated mice all died within three days after infection.

Turning white blood cells into medicinal microrobots with light

Researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have used lasers to precisely control neutrophils — a type of white blood cell — as a natural, biocompatible microrobot in living fish. The “neutrobots” performed multiple tasks, showing they could someday deliver drugs to precise locations in the body.

Sidekick Microbubbles Carry Anti-Cancer Drugs, Damage Tumor Vessels #ASA182

Naomi Matsuura, of the University of Toronto, and her team are adapting microbubbles to become more potent tools for cancer therapy. By shrinking the bubbles and directly loading them with anti-cancer drugs, the bubbles can lower the dose of free drug that is injected and diffuses into nontumor tissue in the body. This results in more targeted treatment and fewer side effects for the patient. Matsuura will discuss her team’s results in her presentation, “Ultrasound-stimulated, drug-loaded bubbles for cancer therapy,” as part of the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. The session will take place May 24 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern U.S.

$1.3 million in NIH grants to enable research into antibody-mediated drug delivery technology

Two National Institute of Health (NIH) grants totaling over $1.3 million will enable research into antibody-mediated drug delivery technology for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disorders. L. Nathan Tumey, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences, is the Principal Investigator on both grants — $1.2 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and $150,000 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Computational Evaluation of Drug Delivery Reveals Room for Inhalers Improvement

Increased air pollution in recent years has exacerbated health risks for people who suffer from pulmonary diseases and these dynamics underscore the importance of increasing the efficacy of drug delivery devices that administer active pharmaceutical ingredients to treat respiratory illnesses. In Physics of Fluids, researchers describe developing a computational evaluation of drug delivery through both pressurized metered-dose inhalers and dry powder inhalers to determine how the process can be improved.

Shih-Ting (Christine) Wang: Designing Materials for Biomedicine

Using DNA-based assembly, the Center for Functional Nanomaterials postdoc has assembled functional proteins into ordered lattices and coated nanostructures for drug delivery.

PhRMA Foundation Awards More than $1 Million to Support Young Scientists with Grants and Fellowships in Drug Discovery and Drug Delivery

The PhRMA Foundation announced the first recipients of its new funding awards in Drug Discovery and Drug Delivery, designed to support the innovative biopharmaceutical research projects of talented young scientists in the United States. A total of 16 recipients were selected and more than $1 million was awarded.

Tiny Biological Package Gets Drug Right To The ‘Heart’ Of Transplant Rejection

For patients who receive a heart transplant in the near future, the old adage, “Good things come in small packages,” may become words to live by. In a recent study, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) demonstrated in mice that they can easily deliver a promising anti-rejection drug directly to the area surrounding a grafted heart by packaging it within a tiny three-dimensional, protein gel cocoon known as a hydrogel. Best of all, the researchers say that the release of the drug is spread out over time, making it highly regulatable and eliminating the need for daily medication to keep rejection in check.

Video — More Than Baby Debuts: Ultrasound Is Used To Deliver Drugs, Treat Tremors

Ultrasound is probably most associated with a parent’s first glimpse of a baby in the womb. However, a new video from the Acoustical Society of America showcases the technology’s abilities to do more than show images of our insides. This video is the second in a series celebrating the International Year of Sound.

Personalized Microrobots Swim Through Biological Barriers, Deliver Drugs to Cells

Biohybrid robots on the micrometer scale can swim through the body and deliver drugs to tumors or provide other cargo-carrying functions. To be successful, they must consist of materials that can pass through the body’s immune response, swim quickly through viscous environments and penetrate tissue cells to deliver cargo. In this week’s APL Bioengineering, researchers fabricated biohybrid bacterial microswimmers by combining a genetically engineered E. coli MG1655 substrain and nanoerythrosomes, small structures made from red blood cells.

PECASE Honoree Elizabeth Nance Highlights the Importance of Collaboration in Nanotechnology

Nanoparticles have been used to treat disease for decades, but scientists are now learning more about how they move through human tissue. PECASE honoree and NIGMS grantee Elizabeth Nance is enlisting minds across different scientific fields to solve the challenge of using nanoparticles to target the right site within the body to increase the effectiveness of treatments for newborn brain injury.

Nanoparticle Drug Delivery Provides Pain Relief and More Effective Opioid Alternative in Animal Study

An international team of researchers has used nanoparticles to deliver a drug—one that previously failed in clinical trials for pain—into specific compartments of nerve cells, dramatically increasing its ability to treat pain in mice and rats. The findings are published Nov. 4 in Nature Nanotechnology.