Nanoparticles meant for drug delivery, pacemakers or artificial joints are targeted by our immune system which identifies and destroys foreign objects, be they bugs or viruses.
![Nanoparticles Targeted By Immune System Nanoparticles Targeted By Immune System](https://images.medindia.net/health-images/1200_1000/nanoparticles.jpg)
In 2008, the group led by Dennis Discher, professor at Pennsylvania University, showed that the human protein CD47 is found on almost all mammalian cell membranes.
Like a border guard inspecting a passport, it tells the macrophage (white blood cells) that the cell or an object isn't an invader and should be allowed to proceed, the journal Science reports.
"There may be other molecules that help quell the macrophage response," Discher said. "But human CD47 is clearly one that says, 'Don't eat me'."
"From your body's perspective... an arrowhead a thousand years ago and a pacemaker today are treated the same -- as a foreign invader," said Pia Rodriguez, a graduate student working under Discher, according to a Penn statement.
"We'd really like things like pacemakers, sutures and drug-delivery vehicles to not cause an inflammatory response from the innate immune system," Rodriguex added.
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Drug-delivery nanoparticles naturally trigger this response, so researchers' earlier attempts to circumvent it involved coating the particles with polymer "brushes".
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