Development of a ‘Molecular Can Opener’ for Drug Delivery

Even if scientists develop the perfect drugs to cure every disease, the unsolved challenge still remains of how to deliver these medicines effectively and safely. Careful formulation goes into making each pill, including for common household medications. But what happens when more complex delivery is needed, such as for large molecules responsible for breakthrough treatments like gene therapy? Drug delivery is a major interdisciplinary challenge, and a new strategy was recently published from a group of physicists at Harvard University. 

The group set out to make a system with a cage-like structure and corresponding opener that can disassemble the cage and release the contents. They used large-scale computational modeling to optimize parameters of the system, such as the interaction strength between the cage and the opener. The cages are made of twelve spherical pieces, while the opener is a six-particle pyramid, with one top particle connecting to each of the five in the pentagonal base. The opener sits on top of one of the particles in the cage and removes it, ideally leaving the remaining structure intact. The dynamics of the interactions can be tweaked by changing the surface of the cage or the shape and size of the opener. 

While it is hard to tell which of the proposed solutions to drug delivery will be a home run when tested in humans, development of systems with controlled disassembly is key to overcoming toxicity in drug delivery. With such a system in place, more efforts could be focused on finding cures for a wide variety of diseases, knowing that we have reliable delivery methods that limit side effects.

These studies were led by Ryan Krueger and Ella King with corresponding author Michael Brenner at Harvard University.

Managing Correspondent: Olivia Lavidor

Press Article: Scientists use machine learning to develop an opener for a molecular can opener (Phys.org) 

Original Journal Articles: Tuning Colloidal Reactions (Physical Review Letters)

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