Feb. 25, 2010 A team of scientists led by Dr Simon Richardson at
the University of Greenwich has got a step closer to one of the
holy grails of drug delivery. The goal -- to find a vehicle that
can carry drugs not just to a specific cell but a specific organ
(organelle) inside the cell, and accurately measure how it
behaves when it gets there -- has proved elusive despite two
decades of research, according to the Journal of Controlled
Release, a top international scientific publication. Now the
journal has given the new research front page billing, saying in
an editorial that Richardson and colleagues provide direct
evidence, for the first time, that nanomedicines can be
delivered to select organelles and manipulated to carry
beneficial agents like genes. Dr Richardson says: "Drug delivery
is important for everyone because it has the potential to
deliver new treatments for diseases which are currently
incurable; and to deliver existing drugs more effectively." "We
are trying to smuggle healthy genes inside ce