Doctor Sang-gyu Park of the Department of Biological Sciences announced on September 5 the discovery of a new technique for monitoring and analyzing the effect of experimental drugs. This new method, which utilizes nano-particles, allows for the monitoring of the effects of drugs within the human cell in real time and could potentially lead to significantly more accurate analysis results.

Conventional methods require the experimental drug to be administered first, with a subsequent extraction of the cells from the body for analysis. The major drawback of this technique lies in the fact that it is difficult to predict any potential side effects of the drug in question. Since the extracted cells must be dissolved in a solution beforehand, all cellular functions are terminated by the time of the analysis. As a result, current attempts at developing new drugs incur great costs while they simultaneously have low success rates.

Dr. Park’s experiments, inspired by the fact that countless nano-particles can combine together to create a large compound, discovered that nano-particles injected into a cell expediently combined within the living cell into a compound. This compound was then able to act as a nano-sensor, making it possible to monitor how the administered drugs combine with their targets in real time by forming clusters around the sites of activation. The research team has dubbed this technology InCell Smart-i.

According to Dr. Park, “This next generation technology is the result of a convergence of nano technology, biology, imaging technology and molecular chemistry, and will play a pivotal role in the development of new medicines.” He also stated that, “This technology has already been transferred to a company with plans to develop new drugs in-house, and commercialization is not far.”

Dr. Park’s discovery has been featured as the September issue’s Hot Paper in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.