Nanocontainers Introduced Into the Nucleus of Living Cells

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: An interdisciplinary team from the University of Basel in Switzerland has succeeded in creating a direct path for artificial nanocontainers to enter into the nucleus of living cells. To this end, they produced biocompatible polymer vesicles that can pass through the pores that decorate the membrane of the cell nucleus. In this way, it might be possible to transport drugs directly into the cell's control center. In order to combat diseases, different therapies strive to intervene in pathological processes that occur in the cell nucleus. Chemotherapies, for example, target biochemical reactions that are involved in the proliferation of cancer cells, while the objective of gene therapies is to insert a desired gene into the nucleus. Therefore, a challenge in the field of nanomedicine is to develop a reliable method of introducing active substances specifically into the cell nucleus. Researchers at the University of Basel have now developed tiny nanocontainers that do just that in living cells. The findings have been published in the journal PNAS.

What could possibly go wrong...

[clickclickdrone]

This sounds like the plot to a low budget sci-fi movie. Move over Dean R Koontz, real life has caught up.

Re: What could possibly go wrong...

[i_ate_god]

We'll need kubernetes to manage our medical treatments

Re:

[i_ate_god]

what?

Re:

[cusco]

Why? Because the mainscream press wants to create a panic over something that so far hasn't been that bad? Ever hear the story of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'? When a real plague comes the public is going to react incorrectly because they're used to overblown panic stories

Re:

[HiThere]

To be fair, it's not clear that the coronavirus epidemic is going to be trivial. It's an RNA virus, and those mutate like anything.

OTOH, I'm told it's the same virus family as the common cold. So I suspect the worry is overblown.

Re:

[HiThere]

Actually, more recent information make things look a bit more serious:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]

It's not a primary source, but it does look like a reasonable one.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

Ever hear the story of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'? When a real plague comes the public is going to react incorrectly because they're used to overblown panic stories.

Certainly explains the current U.S. political climate...

Re:

[pgmrdlm]

Lol, actual Dean Koontz series called Jane Hawk. She was an FBI agent who's husband committed suicide. She went Rouge, and found that people were being injected with Nano Bots where they were taken over in mind control. Funny that you posted this.

Re:

[Nidi62]

She went Rouge, and found that people were being injected with Nano Bots where they were taken over in mind control.

Wow, it's amazing what a change of makeup can do.

Re:

[pgmrdlm]

lol, yea ok. I can't spell. It happens. The spelling mistake was worth the laugh though.

Re:

[pecosdave]

My mind moved to Michael Crichton first. I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and considering he was part of the "great celebrity die-off" that spanned a couple of weeks period where a lot of celebrities died, I suspect he was offed over NEXT addressing issues a little too well.

These have been around for a while

[pecosdave]

Substitute "nanocontainer" with "virus" and you get the old model.

Re: These have been around for a while

[Way Smarter Than You]

Except there's no risk of this artificial delivery system mutating and spreading to others.

Re: These have been around for a while

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Itâ(TM)s certainly less unpredictable than viruses; but there is room for caution in terms of the durability/persistence of these structures and how carefully theyâ(TM)ll be contained during fabrication and use.

The great thing about nanoparticles is that they can have properties bulk material doesnâ(TM)t. The lousy thing about nanoparticles is that this means that the toxicology of the bulk compound often tells you less than you would like it to about what the nanoparticles will do.

Some

Re:

[Applehu Akbar]

Except there's no risk of this artificial delivery system mutating and spreading to others.

THIS is what the big advance is here. "Nanocontainers" will not be easy to implement, but potentially much more versatile in actual treatment of an individual.

Re:

[HiThere]

How do you get them to the right cells? Is it important that they get only to the right cells? What happens if you overdose?

There's a lot of promise, but quite significant problems, too.

Silo

[Notabadguy]

If anyone has ever read the dystopian series "Silo" - this is where the end starts. First with nanocontainers, then with the the threat of terrorists using nanocontainers to engineer ways to kill us all, followed by us making a preemptive strike to wipe out everyone except for some of us, who are stored in giant silos, living out generations while the world clears itself for us to start over again.

Lots of cells

[egyas]

Given the sheer number of cells in the body, even in a relatively small area, how on Earth will they get these nanocontainers into each of them? Just seems like a massive mountain of work to climb. Not sure how they would pull it off.

Re:

[Hylandr]

"I'm not Fat! I'm big datum!"

Re:

[egyas]

"Big datum". ROFL

Oh, and I LOVE your sig line! :)

Inject nanocontainers using ...

[SpaceCracker]

N8s (Nanonetes)