New Developments In Nanotechnology, Magnetism Aid In Delivery Of Medications

Boston, MA (AHN) – Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have developed a way to deliver medications intermittently with the use of magnetic fields and nanotechnology. The 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.

Many medical conditions, such as chronic pain, cancer and diabetes, require medications that cannot be taken orally, but must be dosed intermittently, on an as-needed basis, over a long period of time. Currently only a few delivery techniques have been developed.

At present health officials have the option of using an implanted heat source, an implanted electronic chip or other stimuli as an “on-off” switch to release the drugs into the body. However, thus far, none of these methods can reliably do all that’s needed: repeatedly turn dosing on and off, deliver consistent doses and adjust doses according to the patient’s need.

The research team led by Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD created a small implantable device, less than ½” in diameter, that encapsulates the drug in a specially engineered membrane, embedded with nanoparticles (approximately 1/100,000 the width of a human hair) composed of magnetite, a mineral with natural magnetic properties. When a magnetic field is switched on outside the body, near the device, the nanoparticles heat up, causing the gels in the membrane to warm and temporarily collapse.

This opens up pores that allow the drug to pass through and into the body. When the magnetic force is turned off, the membranes cool and the gels re-expand, closing the pores back up and halting drug delivery. No implanted electronics are required.

“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.

In animal experiments, the membranes remained functional over multiple cycles. The size of the dose was controllable by the duration of the “on” pulse, and the rate of release remained steady, even 45 days after implantation.

Testing indicated that drug delivery could be turned on with only 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.

Researchers reviewing the data agree that this novel approach to drug delivery incorporating engineered ’smart’ nanoparticles appears to overcome a number of limitations facing current methods of delivering medicines.

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