"Nanoparticles are like a Trojan horse that hides drugs inside until they are released."

"Nanoparticles are like a Trojan horse that hides the drugs inside until they are released". This was stated by María Blanco, professor and researcher at department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Navarra, in her talk at lecture "Medicine in the 21st century: micromedicines versus microorganisms", which she gave on the occasion of Science Weeks 2009.

María Blanco, who directs a line of research of School of Pharmacy on Nanotechnologies and controlled release of drugs, explained the importance of these advances in an informative and graphic way. According to her, when a drug is administered in the organism, with the aim of curing a diseased organ, it will be distributed indiscriminately throughout the body without differentiating between healthy and diseased organs. Thus, the specialist continued, it will cause secondary or toxic effects in the cells that are not affected by the disease.

Nanotechnology to increase drug efficacy

"The best known case, perhaps, is cancer chemotherapy. When a cancer patient receives chemotherapy, the drug is not able to distinguish between diseased tumor cells and healthy cells, so it exerts its toxic action also on non-cancerous cells, destroying them," he stressed.

In this sense, he continued, nanotechnology can be of great help financial aid to increase the effectiveness of drugs and reduce their toxicity: "the vectorization of drugs or the use of a vehicle (which would be nanoparticles) for the administration of drugs, means that the drug is not distributed indiscriminately in the body, but can be directed to the organ or tissue we are interested in treating".

At final ," concluded the specialist, "we can liken nanoparticles to a Trojan horse: in the same way that the Trojan horse hid the soldiers, nanoparticles can hide the drugs and travel through the body without being recognized, until they are released in the affected organ".