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9 Nov 2010

What do nanoparticles do in lungs? Depends on how they're treated

Researchers are testing out different ways nanoparticles could be used to deliver drugs through the lungs or diagnose diseases.

The lungs are an incredibly efficient way to deliver toxic chemicals into the bloodstream. However, there are researchers who would like to use the power of the lungs for good. They are testing out different ways nanoparticles could be used to deliver drugs through the lungs or diagnose diseases.

True nanotechnology is not only about size, but also about how nanoscale particles are engineered. Surface charges, or even a therapeutic drug along for the ride, can have an impact on the way a nanoparticle behaves inside the lungs and whether it remains there to do some damage or is released harmlessly out of the body.

So the researchers, writing in Nature Biotechnology, describe their experiments with near-infrared fluorescent nanoparticles that they systematically varied in chemical composition, shape, size and surface charge, biodistribution and elimination. They found that particles larger than 34nm did not easily move out of the lungs to the lymph nodes, where they ca

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