Conventional doughnuts may not be particularly good for our health but newly developed, tiny ring ‘doughnuts’ may be able to deliver drugs selectively, eliminating side effects of treatments like chemotherapy.
Micro-doughnuts were discovered accidentally but could prove to be a drug-delivery express to the liver
The so called micro-doughnuts were discovered by a group at the University of Edinburgh accidentally when researchers added a small amount of dioxane to their usual ethanol solvent for polystyrene micro-spheres. This resulted in the micro-spheres forming with a hole through the middle and subsequently being nicknamed ‘doughnuts’. By testing the uptake into different types of cells Mark Bradley and his team from Edinburgh found that the micro-doughnuts had an overwhelming preference towards liver cells.
“Their unique and highly uniform structure was immediately interesting to us and we considered the possible applications they may have – one of which was as carrier particles for cellular deliver,” said Bradley.
Extensive in vivo testing in rats has confirmed the micro-doughnut behaviour – four hours after the injection into the tail of the rats, the micro-doughnuts were found exclusively in the liver region without any observable side-effects.
Although the team are eager to develop micro-doughnuts for effective and selective drug delivery they also recognise that they may have other applications in filtration or purification devices.
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