Using a new microscopy technique, UNSW researchers have identified the shapes of nanoparticles most effective at delivering drugs to target sites inside cells, for the greatest impact.

Scientia Professors Katharina Gaus of the School of Medical Sciences, and Justin Gooding of the School of Chemistry led the UNSW-based team of researchers who published their discovery in Nature Nanotechnology.

This was a multi-centre collaboration involving Australian Centre for NanoMedicine; ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging; EMBL Australia node in Single Molecule Science; Centre of Advanced Macromolecular Design; and ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology.

“We were able to show for the first time that nanoparticles shaped like rods and worms were more effective than spherical nanoparticles at traversing intracellular barriers and this enabled them to get all the way into the nucleus of the cell,” says lead author UNSW’s Dr Elizabeth Hinde.

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