Vanderbilt University Assistant Professor Eva Harth and colleagues have developed a "nanosponge" that's designed to enhance the effectiveness and reduce undesirable side effects of a number of different drugs.

Harth also discovered a "molecular transporter" that, when attached to the nanosponge, carries it and its cargo across biological barriers into specific intracellular compartments that are very difficult places for most drugs to reach. The team has also developed fluorescent tags that researchers can use to monitor where a specific drug goes.

Instead of trying to encapsulate drugs in nanoscale containers, she decided to create a nanoparticle that has a large number of surface sites to which drug molecules could be attached. To do so, she adopted a method that uses extensive internal cross-linking to scrunch a long, linear molecule into a sphere about 10 nanometers in diameter. Such nanoparticles are called nanosponges.

In collaboration with Professors Heidi Hamm and Dennis Hallahan, Harth is adapting the drug delivery system to fight cancer.

Vanderbilt is applying for two patents on the system.