Description

"By specifically targeting harmful cells with triggered drug release, we can create novel medicinal platforms that bypass healthy, intact cells in the human body and focus their chemotoxic effects only at the site of tumors. This image throbs like a heart with the bright blues of a small molecule dye-but only in the areas where the delivery vehicle is programmed to release it.
A nucleolin-specific DNA aptamer was fused with an engineered polymer that links multiple payloads through a cleavable linkage, and its programmed delivery of payloads into cancer cells was observed from live-cell imaging through a confocal microscope. The Cy5-labeled delivery vehicle (red) successfully recognized human breast cancer cells that overexpressed nucleolin proteins on the membrane and specifically bound to their surfaces. Coumarin payloads (blue) were subsequently unloaded and due to the small size, easily diffused into the cytoplasm of targeted cells achieving highly efficient intracellular delivery."