A new approach to send ‘friendly’ nano-particles into a patient’s blood stream has shown promising results by modifying the surface of these potential drug, vaccine or cancer treatment delivery objects to encourage the best result. Scientists are testing the body’s responses to various surface treatments to nanomaterials.

In collaboration with experts in Australia and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Flinders University Professor of Biomedical Nanotechnology Krasimir Vasilev is testing the body’s responses to various surface treatments to nanomaterials.

This novel approach, called ‘plasma polymer deposition’, shows the potential to tailor the physiological responses to nanomaterials by engineering their surface chemical composition to suit a particular application.

Nanoparticles are widely used for biomedical applications — from vaccines to drug delivery, diagnostics and therapeutics — usually resulting in a response of some kind by the body’s innate immune cellular responses to the foreign body.

«We are working on a wide range of nanoengineering techniques and technologies that are capable of tuning a body’s immune response to nanoparticles used in medical treatments and delivery of various therapeutics in order to improve their efficacy in advanced lifesaving applications,» says Matthew Flinders Professor Vasilev, from Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute at Flinders University.

«When a foreign object enters our body, naturally the body reacts to protect itself. That’s why we get scars from a cut, or an itch from a mosquito bite. Our immune system responds, even when the foreign object is much, much smaller than a splinter, in nano size.

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