For years now, people on the speculative fringe of respectable science have been claiming that nanotechnology was right around the corner and would revolutionize medical treatment. We’re still a long way from that rosy future, but a study published in Nature represents the first successful use of nanotechnology to treat a disease.
Researchers at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, created a ‘nanochemical’ — essentially an extremely small antibiotic — which seeks out dangerous bacteria and kills it by puncturing the cell wall of the invader.
Their research took off from earlier research in polypetides. Polypetides could be used to target bacteria in the same way except for two problems: they tend to break down quickly once introduced into the body and they have a habit of targeting non-bacterial cells which is obviously a definite problem.
Working at the nano scale, the researchers were able to construct synthetic peptide rings which turned out to be me more stable and easier to produce than polypetides. Through trial and error, the researchers produced peptide rings that would attack only bacterial membranes.
Putting their methods to the test, the researchers infected mice with an antibiotic-resistant strain of staph infection, and then injected the peptide rings into the mice. The nanochemicals did their job, completely ridding the mice of a disease that would otherwise be fatal.
Reza Ghadiri, one of the principal researchers involved in the study, noted that one advantage of the nanochemical is that it should be harder for bacteria to develop resistance to it. Antibiotic work by targeting a specific molecule, and over time very subtle changes in that molecule allow bacteria to develop resistance.
But in order to become resistant to the peptide rings, the bacteria would have to alter numerous molecules. Not outside the realm of possibility, but likely a task that is several magnitudes of order more difficult than altering a single molecule.
These peptides are obviously a long way from human testing, with research on the safety of these drugs in animals still in its infancy, but some of those wild-eyed futurists are probably going to feel vindicated by this fascinating breakthrough.
Source:
Antibiotic prototype punctures bugs. Tom Clarke, Nature, July 26, 2001.