KRISS Developed Nanoparticle Sorting Technique for Medicinal Efficacy Improvement

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) and Seoul National University announced on November 16 that they developed a technique for pinpointing which nanoparticles are effective for the treatment of diseases.

“For an effective treatment, the role of nanoparticles as an agent penetrating cells and delivering medicine is very important,” the researchers explained, adding, “This technique will contribute to nanomedicine development.”

Their technology can be defined as a process in which the capacitance of a cell is measured and then a change in the slope of the capacitance is measured in real time with a nanomaterial injected. Until now, the microscopic observation of the locations of nanoparticles marked with a fluorescent material has been mainly used for the purpose and it has been impossible to track the change in real time.

During their research, the two organizations measured the capacitance of vascular endothelial and cancer cells by means of current flow after growing the cells on a gold substrate. Then, they injected a nanomaterial into the substrate and observed how the capacitance changes at regular intervals. “With this technique, nanoparticle sorting can be carried out before drug synthesis because the degree of cell penetration can be confirmed in advance,” they added.