An effective way to eliminate side effects of drugs
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Dutch researchers have come up with a way through which drugs purposefully reach the patient's focus of disease without causing side effects. They also created a special camera that shoots at a speed of 25 million frames per second, through which it became possible to trace this process. There are several ways of taking drugs inside, as a result of which the blood delivers them to their destination - inflammation or tumor. But some medications contain substances that can harm other organs. In particular, chemotherapy, killing cancer cells, destroys and healthy. Specialists from the University of Twente set themselves the task of developing a method that would allow ingested drugs to achieve their goal without side effects.
One of such methods was based on the use of microscopic vesicles, inside which a certain drug is placed. Bubbles are injected into the patient's blood, and then ultrasound is activated in a specific place in the human body, for example, in a tumor. Vesicles also contribute to the fact that the drug will be easily assimilated, since they have the ability to "shoot through" small holes in the cells.
The deterrent in this study was the inability to see how the drug is digested, because the process was lightning fast, and the vesicles were too small for routine microscopic examination. Specialists of the Faculty of Fluid Physics at the University of Twente, together with colleagues from the University of Erasmus, developed a method through which it was possible to track the process of assimilation. To do this, they used a high-speed fluorescent camera Brandaris 128, which converted the smallest images into a visual picture.
"To date, the Brandaris 128 is the fastest camera in the world," Michel Ferslice, associate professor of the Fluid Physics Department at the University of Twente, told RBC daily. - The principle of its operation is that the image from the microscope is projected onto a mirror rotating at a speed of 20,000 revolutions per second. The reflected image is rolled around 128 CCD cameras like a lighthouse light. The interval between each recording of CCD cameras is more than 40 nanoseconds, that is, 25 million frames per second. "
Mr. Ferslice added that in order to be able to see the medicine inside with a laser, he had to be painted. In the future, specialists want to improve the method in such a way as to create special biochemical stickers that would be glued to diseased cells. Then you can act more locally, and with the help of Brandaris 128 you can view and manage the process.
Scientists note that this method has great potential, although it requires further elaboration.
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