Chinese scientists have invented a tiny vehicle which can carry drugs in human blood vessels and unload drugs only at therapeutic targets.
   
Shi Jianlin, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Shanghai Institute of Silicate, led a research team to invent the nano-vehicle.
   
"The 200-nanometer-long vehicle can safely carry drugs and release them suspendedly at focuses targeted by physicians," Shi said, adding that unloaded nano-vehicles can go out of human bodies via alimentary canals.
   
"This method can reduce side effects as much as possible and make the curative effects of drugs into full play," Shi said.
   
Shi completed his sophisticated tests in his lab, delivering antiphlogistic and analgesic drugs and cancer curatives.
   
The invention was published by the American Chemical Society Journal and a German academic journal of Angew Chemical.
   
Shi said that one gram of drugs needs thousands of such vehicles for transportation.
   
The research team used layer-by-layer technique in a hollow mesoporous silica. Mesoporous materials are of great research interests for their potential applications as catalysts, absorbents, key components in chemical sensors and optical nanodevices.
   
The past decade has seen the fast development of nanocomposite materials from ordered mesoporous materials.
   
The size distribution and dispersion of nanomaterials, in addition to their dimension, are crucial for their performance, Shi said.
   
Angew Chemical rated Shi's achievement as a "very important paper."
   
Chinese scientists have achieved a lot in nanotechnology. Statistics showed that from January to August 2004, China was ranked first in academic papers in nanotechnology by the Scientific Citation Index.

(Xinhua News Agency October 1, 2005)