To treat diseases of the brain such as brain cancer, therapeutics must navigate through a maze of over 100 billion densely packed cells. The Hammond Lab is designing nanoparticle drug carriers that can pass through the tiny gaps between cells to reach as many cancer cells as possible, while minimizing interactions with healthy cells to reduce off-target toxicity.

In this image, the nuclei of brain tumor cells are shown in red, with the cell bodies of only a subset of glial-like cancer cells shown in grey. The nanoparticles, shown in blue, can be seen to travel along a tortuous path through the dense cellular environment to maximize coverage of the tumor.