International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), the world’s largest computer-services provider, may have a tiny solution for a $34 billion public health problem.
Engineers based in IBM’s San Jose, California, facility created nanoparticles 50,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair that can search out and obliterate the cell walls of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic drugs. The minute structures harmlessly degrade, leaving no residue, according to a study describing the work in the journal Nature Chemistry.
If bacteria are undone can cancer be far behind?
Wow. What wonderful research. Mr Watson would be proud.
Nanotechnology does have the potential to deliver cytotoxic drugs directly to a cancer cell, while largely avoiding non-cancerous cells. The research on that is actually quite far along.
I cheer such advancements in biomedical technology, even as I fear both their weaponization and the inevitable “How were we supposed to know?” that follows from their unforseen undesirable consequences.