UF team thinking small for treatments

Gina Miller writes "The Gainesville Sun.com has an article: UF team thinking small for treatments . The Sun medical staff writer, reports that the University of Florida are developing "nanopharmaceuticals" and believe these drug-binding molecules to have great potential for drug transport to even the tiniest capillaries in the human body. The work is currently focused on drug overdose situations, in which these molecules could easily bind to the invader drug to reduce toxic effects. Dr. Donn Dennis, professor of anesthesiology and medical director of the research project states "Let's say you have a specific type of cancer cell in the bloodstream and want to get a chemotherapeutic agent to attack it. This technology has the potential to deliver that drug only to the inside of the cells that are cancerous. You would avoid all the side effects of the cancer drugs, which can make every organ in the body sick." Dennis says about nanotechnology "It has major implications not only in medicine, but in food production, energy production, and other fundamental problems that we face as the world's population continues to increase.""