News Room

Researchers led by Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD, of Children's Hospital Boston, funded by the National Institutes of Health, have devised a solution that combines magnetism with nanotechnology.

The device, which Kohane's team is continuing to develop for clinical use, is described in the journal Nano Letters (published online September 8, DOI: 10.1021/nl9018935).

"A device of this kind would allow patients or their physicians to determine exactly when drugs are delivered, and in what quantities," says Kohane, who directs the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery in the Department of Anesthesiology at Children's.

Testing indicated that drug delivery could be turned on with only a 1 to 2 minute time lag before drug release, and turned off with a 5 to 10 minute time lag. The membranes remained mechanically stable under tensile and compression testing, indicating their durability, showed no toxicity to cells, and were not rejected by the animals' immune systems. They are activated by temperatures higher than normal body temperatures, so would not be affected by the heat of a patient’s fever or inflammation.

"This novel approach to drug delivery using engineered 'smart' nanoparticles appears to overcome a number of limitations facing current methods of delivering medicines," says Alison Cole, Ph.D., who oversees anesthesia grants at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). "While some distance away from use in humans, this technology has the potential to provide precise, repeated, long-term, on-demand delivery of drugs for a number of medical applications, including the management of pain."

The study was funded by the NIGMS. The article can be accessed here.

Contacts:
Jamie Newton
617-919-3110
james.newton@childrens.harvard.edu

Alisa Zapp Machalek
National Insituties of Health
301-496-7301
alisa.machalek@nih.gov

Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston today is one of the nation’s leading pediatric medical centers, the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts children. In addition to 396 pediatric and adolescent inpatient beds and more than 225 outpatient programs, Children's houses the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries benefit both children and adults. More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 13 members of the Institute of Medicine and 15 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.