Monday, November 21, 2011

Darpa: Do Away With Antibiotics, Then Destroy All Pathogens

Danger Room writes Darpa: Do Away With Antibiotics, Then Destroy All Pathogens "Instead, Darpa wants researchers to use nanoparticles — tiny, autonomous drug delivery systems that can carry molecules of medication anywhere in the body, and get them right into a targeted cell. Darpa would like to see nanoparticles loaded with “small interfering RNA (siRNA)” — a class of molecules that can target and shut down specific genes. If siRNA could be reprogrammed “on-the-fly” and applied to different pathogens, then the nanoparticles could be loaded up with the right siRNA molecules and sent directly to cells responsible for the infection."

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