This week, we are talking about nanoparticles that perform two or more functions

Question

This week, we are talking about nanoparticles that perform two or more functions in the body. Your challenge is to think about how to design a multi-modal nanoparticle for your disease of interest. Think about what is the strongest clinical need - should you develop a nanoparticle that treats your disease at the same time in two different ways (e g. synergistic treatment)? Or would you like to be able to diagnose and treat a disease at the same time (e g theranostic nanoparticles?) Or do you need a more robust way to measure whether a treatment is working (treatment monitoring)? Please explain the biological problem you are trying to solve and how you would go about designing one or more nanoformulations to solve this problem And remember, you are welcome to use the literature for ideas!

Explanation / Answer

Malaria is a life-threatening blood disease caused by parasites and is transmitted to humans by theAnopheles mosquito. Once bitten, parasites multiply in the host's liver before infecting and destroying red blood cells.Malaria is cuased by two diferent parasites plamodium vivax and faclciparum.till now there is no promising vaccine was developed for the disease and day by day there is an increased drug resistance for these parasites.hence controling the disease is very challenging.

Researchers have designed polymer nanoparticles to mimic the surfaces of red blood cells so that the particles bind to malaria parasites and prevent them from infecting real red blood cells.

The nanomimics have been tried in test tubes only, but if this strategy works in the body, it could help treat the deadliest type of malaria caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite.

P. falciparum has a complex life cycle that makes it difficult for both the immune system to fight a malaria infection and for scientists to target the disease with drugs and vaccines. After entering the body through a mosquito bite and replicating in the liver, the parasite enters the bloodstream at a growth stage called the merozoite. Within about a minute, merozoites enter red blood cells using receptors on the cells’ surfaces. Once inside the cells, the parasites multiply. After about 48 hours, each infected cell releases more merozoites, which go on to infect more cells. This process continues, triggering waves of fever until the patient fights off the infection and recovers or else succumbs to the disease as a result of severe anemia, respiratory problems, encephalopathy, or other complications.

"How Nanoparticles helps in treating the disease"

A recent study "Nanoparticles Trick Malaria Parasites By Mimicking Red Blood Cells" can make you understnad in a betterway..i think this will usefull for you.

Researchers at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, led by chemist Wolfgang Meier, wanted to design new nanoparticles to misdirect invading merozoites. To get into blood cells, merozoites first bind to heparan sulfate, a polysaccharide on the cells’ surfaces. The blood-thinning drug heparin has a similar chemical structure to the sugar polymer and can attract merozoites. But heparin doesn’t circulate long enough in the bloodstream to be effective, and giving an anticoagulant to patients in a fragile state could be dangerous.

So Meier’s group decided to put the drug on a nanoparticle. They made a block copolymer consisting of heparin attached to a hydrophobic polymer and then mixed it in water with another block copolymer that tends to form hollow spheres called polymerosomes. The resulting particles covered with heparin mimic the surface chemistry of a red blood cell membrane.

The researchers tested these nanomimics with merozoites in a culture dish. The parasites bound to the heparin on the nanomimics and got coated with the spheres. The nanomimic particles were more than 100 times more effective at binding merozoites than free heparin. The team also placed the nanomimics in a culture dish containing healthy and infected red blood cells. When merozoites escaped the infected cells, they were covered by the nanoparticles and didn’t infect the healthy cells.

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