To do this, the research team took hedrik ...

IBM researchers are developing nanoparticles that kill bacteria, poking holes in them. Scientists hope that microbes are less likely to develop resistance to such drugs, which means that it can be used to combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. This type of drug had little success in clinical trials in the past, but the first test nanoparticles on animals are promising. Drug-resistant bacteria have become a serious problem. In 2005, nearly 95,000 people in the United States have developed life-threatening staph infections resistant to multiple antibiotics, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It takes only one or two decades to produce microbes resistant to antibiotics traditional-oriented features of metabolism within cells, says the professor of chemical engineering and biological Nanyanh in Technological University in Singapore, who was not connected with the research. Unlike drugs that compromise microbial cell membranes are less likely or slower to induce resistance, she says. "We try to create polymers that interact with microbes in quite different than conventional antibiotics," says James Hedrik, materials scientist at IBM Almaden lab in San Jose, California. To do this, the research team used in Hedrik past work on the library polymer building blocks that can be mixed and matched to make complex strattera cost nanoparticles. In order to nanoparticles that selectively attack the bacterial membrane, and then destroy the damage inside the body, IBM team collected three types of blocks. The center is a backbone polymer sequence element that is soluble in water and the interaction with bacterial membranes. At both ends of the spine hydrophobic sequence. In a small number of these chains of the polymer is added to the water, the differences between the ends and middle sequences to polymer self-assemble into spherical nanoparticles whose shell consists entirely of parts that will interact with bacterial cells. This work is described this week in Nature Chemistry

. Lab IBM's not equipped for biological tests, so that researchers, in collaboration with >> << to Singapore Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology for testing of nanoparticles. They found that nanoparticles can be dissolved, and kill gram-positive bacteria, a large class of microbes that includes drug-resistant staphylococcus. Nanoparticles also killed fungi. Other deadly bacteria that have different types of cell membranes is not vulnerable to these nanoparticles, but IBM researchers say they are developing nanoparticles that can target these bacteria too, although it is more difficult. "Through molecular tailoring," says a senior manager in materials chemistry IBM Almaden », we can do all sorts of things" design particles with specific shape, charge, solubility in water, or other property. .