In Small Packages

Immune cells patrol our bodies looking for threats, but sometimes medical therapies are wrongly identified as the enemy. These capsules made from jelly-like hydrogel are designed to carry drugs or transplanted cells deep into damaged organs. They’ve been attacked – mobbed by immune cells (dyed green here, with blue nuclei) and overgrown with fibrosis (red). As well as being painful for patients, fibrosis (or scar tissue) can prevent these devices from releasing their cargo effectively. To elude the immune defences, crafty researchers ignored the logic of spy films. Making the devices bigger, not smaller – increasing from half a millimetre up to two millimetres in diameter – prevented their detection. Investigating how and why the immune system reacts to differently-sized capsules could have huge implications – drug delivery that is more ‘biocompatible’ may be a simple matter of making these tiny devices just a little bit bigger.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Omid Veiseh and colleagues
• Koch Institute at MIT, USA
• Copyright held by original authors
• Research published in Nature Materials, May 2015