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Enzyme-Powered “Snot Bots” Help Deliver Drugs in Sticky Situations | Tiny, enzyme-powered bots can push through mucus, helping to deliver drugs more efficiently.


Tiny, enzyme-powered "snot bots" can push through the sticky defensive mucus layer, helping to deliver drugs more efficiently.

But this slimy secretion exists in more places than just your nose and piles of dirty tissues — it also lines and helps protect the lungs, stomach, intestines and eyes. And now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have demonstrated in mice that their tiny, enzyme-powered “snot bots” can push through the defensive, sticky layer and potentially deliver drugs more efficiently. To build the nano-sized robots (10 of them lined up would span a red blood cell), researchers attached catalase enzymes to porous silica nanoparticles.

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