Many diseases and conditions can be treated with timely delivery of specific drugs, but it’s often unknown at the time when the drug is needed. Additionally, many drugs are difficult to manufacture in a factory, but some of those can be manufactured easier with the help of the very body needing these medicine. Overcoming these challenges may be done using artificial cells, that act as tiny chemical factories, that have been developed by researchers at Imperial College London.
The team was able to create special lipid-based vesicles that have even smaller, light sensitive vesicles inside of them. When light is used to illuminate the larger vesicles, the smaller vesicles inside of them break down and their contents are allowed to mix and react. This can allow for easily controlled production of drugs right inside the body and the triggering of this production using external means.
The researchers are working to make a variety of internal vesicles that react to different wavelengths of light, potentially providing a way to have only certain vesicles react with certain other ones. This can significantly expand the capabilities of the team’s cell-like chemical factories.
Study in Nature Communications: Light-triggered enzymatic reactions in nested vesicle reactors…
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