Results tagged “heartattacks”
More MIT madness leads off this edition of Beaker Hill. We’re always thoroughly impressed by these Cantabridgian crusaders, not just for the intriguing work they put together, but also for the way completely off-the-wall concepts make perfect sense in their world.Take their new cancer-targeting system loosely modeled after a Viking longboat. No, it’s not a mashup of Beowulf and Fantastic Voyage (as entertaining as that would be) but a contraption out of the lab of Stephen Lippard. The system uses a carbon nanotube as the “boat,” which carries two passengers: a folate derivative used to target certain types of cancer cells, and the cancer-killing drug cisplatin. Once the boat reaches shore by virtue of the cancer cells’ folate receptors, the cisplatin is released to loot, pillage, and destroy everything in its wake. The Lippard team’s article can be found in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, along with a teaser for their next project: a Robespierre-inspired obesity targeting compound that slices through fat cells like a guillotine and screams, “Let them eat cake!”