Artificial red blood cells to transport drugs in addition to oxygen

mauromar (73)in #science • 4 years ago

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Erythrocytes, also known as red blood cells, are cells that circulate throughout the body, carrying the oxygen they transport together with hemoglobin throughout our body.

This makes these cells perfect candidates for distributing all kinds of drugs and nanoparticles throughout the body, but modifying such complex and fragile biological cells is too complex for today.

To solve this, a team of scientists from the University of New Mexico and the Technological University of South China have set about designing synthetic red blood cells with the same properties as biological ones and some other additional functions.

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To accomplish this feat, scientists first coated human red blood cells from donors with a thin layer of silica to create a mold of the cells.

Once the mold with the internal and external characteristics of the red blood cells is obtained, it is filled with chitin compounds present in the shell of shrimp and some molluscs and alginates from certain types of algae to provide them with elasticity.

Once the process is complete, the mold is dissolved with hydrofluoric acid, and all fragments of biological red blood cell membranes are coated to prevent rejection and, ¡alehop!, artificial red blood cells.

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Once obtained, the scientists not only managed to add hemoglobin to the synthetic red blood cells, but were also able to add anticancer drugs and magnetic nanoparticles to it.

It is certainly fascinating to see how nanotechnology makes its way in medicine and gives us all hope, if not to live longer, at least to live healthier until the end of our days.

More information:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b08714