Tiny Trojan Horses: Tumor-Penetrating Nanoparticles Infiltrate Cancer Cells

Tiny Trojan Horses: Tumor-Penetrating Nanoparticles Infiltrate Cancer Cells

Collections: Image Award Winners, Nano-based Drugs

2017 Award Winner

Liangliang Hao, Srivatsan Raghavan, Emilia Pulver, Jeffrey Wyckoff, Sangeeta Bhatia

Koch Institute at MIT, Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine

You can lead a nanoparticle to tumor cells, but you can’t make them shrink—at least not until the particle gets inside.

This image shows biocompatible nanoparticles (yellow) inside clusters of pancreatic cancer cells (pink). The particles’ two-peptide uptake system—one to target the tumor, the second to penetrate it—was specially designed to overcome known difficulties in treating pancreatic cancer, but the Bhatia Lab hopes to expand the use of this modular delivery system for other cancer types as well.

This project is funded in part by the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at MIT's Koch Institute.

Video

Liang Hao shares the story behind her award-winning image. You can also watch the presentation from the exhibition opening event on March 23, 2017 here.